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    A Study Guide for Henry Fielding's "Tom Jones"
    A Study Guide for Henry Fielding's "Tom Jones"
    A Study Guide for Henry Fielding's "Tom Jones"
    Ebook49 pages38 minutes

    A Study Guide for Henry Fielding's "Tom Jones"

    By Gale and Cengage

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    About this ebook

    A Study Guide for Henry Fielding's "Tom Jones," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Novels for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Novels for Students for all of your research needs.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCengage Learning - Gale
    Release dateJun 15, 2016
    ISBN9781535841368
    A Study Guide for Henry Fielding's "Tom Jones"

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      Book preview

      A Study Guide for Henry Fielding's "Tom Jones" - Gale

      1

      Tom Jones

      Henry Fielding

      1749

      Introduction

      Tom Jones, Henry Fielding's third novel, was first published in England in 1749 and was an immediate best-seller. It is a comedy in both senses of the formal definition: it is amusing and all ends well.

      Originally entitled The History of Tom Jones, A Foundling, the book tells the story of the title character from infancy through his marriage to the beautiful and virtuous Sophia Western, the pursuit of whom takes up much of the tale. Along the way, Fielding relentlessly satirizes the hypocrisy and vanity of most of his supporting cast. He shows that the lusty rascal Tom is, in fact, an infinitely better human being than the vicious pretenders who surround him and scheme against him while camouflaged in a thin veneer of artificial virtue. The hero overcomes not only all external plots and obstacles but, most importantly, his own weaknesses of character, to win both love and fortune.

      Author Biography

      Henry Fielding was born April 22, 1707, at his grandparents' estate in Somerset, England. He was the first of seven children born to Edmund Fielding, a career military officer, and Sarah Gould Fielding, daughter of a wealthy judge.

      Fielding spent his childhood on his parents' large farm in Dorset and was tutored at home. His mother died when he was ten, and his father sent the children to live with their maternal grandmother, Lady Gould. Edmund Fielding soon married a widow and set about squandering his children's inheritance. Lady Gould filed suit for legal custody of the children and won. In the course of these events, Henry became willful and defiant. His father sent him to Eton in 1719, where he studied Greek, Latin, and the classics. He remained there until 1724 and later briefly attended the University of Leyden in Holland.

      Fielding began his writing career as a playwright; his first play, Love in Several Masques, was performed in London in 1728. He soon became a successful playwright and also published poems and essays.

      In 1734, Fielding married Charlotte Cradock, a beautiful woman who would later be the inspiration for Sophia Western in Tom Jones. They had five children, four of whom would die quite young, before Charlotte died in 1744.

      Fielding's play The Historical Register, performed in 1737, satirized Prime Minister Sir Robert Walpole so acutely that the government shut down the theater where Fielding was working. It became impossible for him to earn a living writing plays, so he went to law school and was admitted to the bar in 1740. In addition to practicing law, Fielding cofounded a political and cultural journal called Champion.

      The year 1740 also saw the publication of Pamela, a novel by Samuel Richardson that soon became the first bestseller of all time. Fielding felt so strongly that the novel was overrated that he wrote a parody of it, Shamela. This launched his fiction career. Another, more ambitious parody of the same novel, Joseph Andrews, appeared in 1742.

      In 1747, Fielding married Mary Daniel, who

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