Everything about Henry Fielding totally explained
Henry Fielding (
April 22,
1707 –
October 8,
1754) was an
English novelist and
dramatist known for his rich earthy humour and
satirical prowess, and as the author of the
novel Tom Jones.
Aside from his literary achievements, he's a significant place in the history of law-enforcement, having founded what some have called London's first
police force, the
Bow Street Runners, using his authority as a magistrate.
Biography
Born into an aristocratic family at
Sharpham near
Glastonbury in
Somerset in
1707, Fielding was educated at
Eton College, where he established a lifelong friendship with
Pitt the Elder. His younger sister,
Sarah, also became a successful writer.
After a romantic episode with a young woman that ended in his getting into trouble with the law, he went to
London where his literary career began.
In
1728, he travelled to
Leiden to study classics and law at the University. However, due to lack of money he was obliged to return to London and he began writing for the
theatre, some of his work being savagely critical of the contemporary government under Sir
Robert Walpole.
The
Theatrical Licensing Act of
1737 is alleged to be a direct result of his activities. The particular play that triggered the Licensing Act was
The Vision of the Golden Rump, but Fielding's satires had set the tone.
Once the Licensing Act passed, political satire on the stage was virtually impossible, and playwrights whose works were staged were viewed as suspect. Fielding therefore retired from the theatre and resumed his career in law and, in order to support his wife Charlotte Cradock and two children, he became a barrister.
His lack of money sense meant that he and his family often endured periods of poverty, but he was also helped by
Ralph Allen, a wealthy benefactor who later formed the basis of Squire Allworthy in
Tom Jones. After Fielding's death, Allen provided for the education and support of his children.
Fielding never stopped writing political satire and satires of current arts and letters. His
Tragedy of Tragedies of
Tom Thumb (for which
Hogarth designed the frontispiece) was, for example, quite successful as a printed play.
He also contributed a number of works to journals of the day. He wrote for
Tory periodicals, usually under the name of "Captain Hercules Vinegar".
As Justice of the Peace he issued a warrant for the arrest of
Colley Cibber for "murder of the English language".
During the late 1730s and early 1740s Fielding continued to air his liberal and anti-Jacobite views in satirical articles and newspapers. Almost by accident, in anger at the success of Richardson's
Pamela, Fielding took to writing novels in 1741 and his first major success was
Shamela, an anonymous
parody of
Samuel Richardson's melodramatic novel. It is a satire that follows the model of the famous Tory satirists of the previous generation (
Jonathan Swift and
John Gay, in particular).
He followed this up with
Joseph Andrews (
1742), an original work supposedly dealing with Pamela's brother, Joseph. Although also begun as a parody, this work developed into an accomplished novel in its own right and is considered to mark Fielding's debut as a serious novelist.
In
1743, he published a novel in the
Miscellanies volume III (which was the first volume of the Miscellanies). This was
The History of the Life of the Late Mr Jonathan Wild the Great.
This novel is sometimes thought of as his first because he almost certainly began composing it before he wrote
Shamela and
Joseph Andrews. It is a satire of Walpole that draws a parallel between Walpole and
Jonathan Wild, the infamous gang leader and highwayman.
He implicitly compares the
Whig party in
Parliament with a gang of thieves being run by Walpole, whose constant desire to be a "Great Man" (a common epithet for Walpole) should culminate only in the antithesis of greatness: being hanged.
His anonymously-published
The Female Husband of 1746 is a fictionalized account of a notorious case in which a female transvestite was tried for duping another woman into marriage. Though a minor item in Fielding's total
oeuvre, the subject is consistent with his ongoing preoccupation with fraud, sham, and masks.
His greatest work was
Tom Jones (
1749), a meticulously constructed
picaresque novel telling the convoluted and hilarious tale of how a foundling came into a fortune.
Charlotte, on whom he later modeled the heroines of both
Tom Jones and
Amelia, died in
1744. Three years later Fielding - disregarding public opinion - married her former maid, Mary, who was pregnant.
Despite this, his consistent anti-Jacobitsm and support for the
Church of England led to him being rewarded a year later with the position of London's Chief Magistrate, and his literary career went from strength to strength.
Joined by his younger half-brother
John, he helped found what some have called London's first
police force, the
Bow Street Runners in
1749.
According to the historian
G.M. Trevelyan, they were two of the best magistrates in eighteenth-century London, and did a great deal to enhance the cause of judicial reform and improve prison conditions.
His influential pamphlets and enquiries included a proposal for the abolition of
public hangings. This did not, however, imply opposition to capital punishment as such—as evident, for example, in his presiding in
1751 over the trial of the notorious criminal
James Field, finding him guilty in a robbery and sentencing him to hang.
However, Fielding's ardent commitment to the cause of justice as a great humanitarian in the 1750s, coincided with a rapid deterioration in his health to such an extent that he went abroad to
Portugal in
1754 in search of a cure. Gout, asthma and other afflictions meant that he'd to use crutches.
He died in
Lisbon two months later and his tomb at the English Church may be visited. Despite being now
blind, John Fielding succeeded his older brother as Chief Magistrate and became known as the 'Blind Beak' of Bow Street for his ability to recognise criminals by their voice alone.
Literary Style
Whereas Defoe and Richardson both attempt to hide the fictional nature of their work under the guise of 'memoirs' and 'letters' respectively, Henry Fielding adopted a position which represented a new departure in terms of prose fiction—in no way do his novels constitute an effort to disguise literary devices. In fact, he was the first major novelist to openly admit that his prose fiction was pure artefact. Also, in comparison with his arch rival and contemporary, Richardson, Fielding presents his reader with a much wider range of characters taken from all social classes.
Fielding's lack of psychological realism (for example the feelings and emotions of his characters are rarely explored in any depth) can perhaps be put down to his overriding concern to reveal the universal order of things. It can be argued that his novel
Tom Jones reflects its author's essentially neoclassical outlook—character is something the individual is blessed with at birth, a part of life's natural order or pattern. Characters within Fielding's novels also correspond largely to types; for example Squire Western is a typically boorish and uncultivated Tory squire, obsessed with fox hunting, drinking and acquiring more property.
So Fielding's comic epic contains a range of wonderful—but essentially static—characters whose motives and behaviour are largely predetermined. There is little emotional depth to his portrayal of them, and the complex realities of interactive human relationships that are so much a part of the modern novel are of negligible importance to him. Perhaps the character we come to know best is the figure of the omniscient narrator himself (for example Fielding) whose company some of his readers come to enjoy.
In popular culture
Fielding is the central character in the 2008 Channel 4 historical drama City of Vice, an account on the early cases of the Bow Street runners, which used Fielding's diaries as a source. Fielding was played by the actor Ian McDiarmid.Further Information
Get more info on 'Henry Fielding'.
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