TOM JONES (1963) Fielding

A foundling of mysterious parentage brought up by Mr. Allworthy on his country estate, Tom Jones is deeply in love with the seemingly unattainable Sophia Western, the beautiful daughter of the neighboring squire—though he sometimes succumbs to the charms of the local girls. When Tom is banished to make his own fortune and Sophia follows him to London to escape an arranged marriage, the adventure begins. A vivid Hogarthian panorama of eighteenth-century life, spiced with danger and intrigue, bawdy exuberance and good-natured authorial interjections, Tom Jones is one of the greatest and most ambitious comic novels in English literature. The plot is simple, but 18th Century writers take twice as long to tell it. Stick with it. A foundling of mysterious parentage brought up by Mr. Allworthy on his country estate, Tom Jones is deeply in love with the seemingly unattainable Sophia Western, the beautiful daughter of the neighboring squire—though he sometimes succumbs to the charms of the local girls. When Tom is banished to make his own fortune and Sophia follows him to London to escape an arranged marriage, the adventure begins. A vivid panorama of eighteenth-century life, spiced with danger and intrigue, bawdy exuberance and good-natured authorial interjections, Tom Jones is one of the greatest and most ambitious comic novels in English literature. A review — Tom Jones is about human nature, as Fielding reminds you again and again in his amusing “blowhard author” introductions to each of the books in the novel. If you think, reading these introductions, that they are ridiculous and irrelevant and you don’t want to read them, Fielding gives you a pass, saying in one of the early introductions that they are indeed ridiculous and superfluous to the story and you don’t have to read them if you don’t want to. He also has a passage of a physician opining unintelligibly about a patient that could be coming out of the mouth of a 21st century physician opining unintelligibly about a patient. One of the hallmarks of a classic is timelessness. This book is timeless, and, for the most part, hilarious. Some of the Book names are hilarious in their own right. Henry Fielding (22 April 1707 – 8 October 1754) was an English novelist and dramatist known for his rich, earthy humor and satirical prowess, Additionally, he holds a significant place in the history of law enforcement, having used his authority as a magistrate to found (with his half-brother John) what some have called London’s first police force, the Bow Street Runners. His younger sister, Sarah, also became a successful writer. Historical fiction writers thank him for the Bow Street Runners; what would they do without them?