Books by Henry Fielding

A new edition of a satire on Richardson's PAMELA, featuring the character of Parson Adams. With explanatory notes by A R Humphreys.

Best known today for the novels Joseph Andrews and Tom Jones, Henry Fielding was just as renowned in his own time as a prolific and highly successful dramatist. Among his most popular plays was The Tragedy of Tragedies: Or, The Life and Death of Tom Thumb, one of the most extraordinary parodies in English theater. The print version of the play incorporates, in an elaborate structure of annotations, a remarkable satire of heroic drama and of the pretensions and excesses of "false scholarship." This edition includes the text of the play itself and the text of the extraordinary notes (by Fielding's pseudonym "H. Scriblerus Secundus"), appearing in facing page layout; extensive explanatory notes for the modern reader appear at the bottom of the page. Also included are a substantial introduction and a wide range of background materials that set the work in the context of its time. These contextual materials include contemporary reviews, excerpts from the plays that Fielding's parody most frequently targeted, and selections from works that provided inspiration for The Tragedy of Tragedies--from contemporary versions of the "Tom Thumb" folktale to satirical writing by authors such as Alexander Pope, John Gay, and George Villiers.

A scholarly edition of works by Henry Fielding. The edition presents an authoritative text, together with an introduction, commentary notes, and scholarly apparatus.

A scholarly edition of works by Henry Fielding. The edition presents an authoritative text, together with an introduction, commentary notes, and scholarly apparatus.

A novel that counters the traditional courtship plot of eighteenth-century novels with its portrayal of a marriage between an errant husband and his wife, and is ahead of its time in its use of fragmented narrative.

This is the first of three volumes of plays by Henry Fielding, whose vibrant early career in theatre has been overshadowed by his later fame as the author of novels like Tom Jones. This edition makes his plays, and his rich gift for theatrical comedy, accessible for the first time in modern form.

Covers Henry Fielding's journalism, which occupied a far greater part of his time than has been traditionally acknowledged. This book contains explanatory annotations and appendices. It emphasizes on matters such as genesis and composition, circumstances of publication, in addition to immediate biographical, literary, and historical backgrounds.

Both Joseph Andrews (1742) and Shamela (1741) were prompted by the success of Richardson's Pamela (1740), of which Shamela is a splendidly bawdy parody. In both works Fielding demonstrates his concern for the corruption of contemporary society, politics, religion, morality, and taste. This revised and expanded edition follows the text of Joseph Andrews established by Martin C. Battestin for the definitive WesleyanEdition of Fielding's works. The text of Shamela is based on the first edition, and two substantial appendices reprint the preliminary matter from Conyers Middleton's Life of Cicero and the second edition of Richardson's Pamela (both closely parodied in Shamela). A new introduction by Thomas Keymer situates Fielding's works in their critical andhistorical contexts.

The real-life Jonathan Wild, gangland godfather and self-styled "Thieftaker General," controlled much of the London underworld until he was executed for his crimes in 1725. Even during his lifetime his achievements attracted attention; after his death balladeers sang of his exploits, and satirists made connections between his success and the triumph of corruption in high places. Fielding built on these narratives to produce one of the greatest sustained satires in the English language. Published in 1743, at a time when the modern novel had yet to establish itself as a fixed literary form, Jonathan Wild is at the same time a brilliant black comedy, an incisive political satire, and a profoundly serious exploration of human "greatness" and "goodness," as relevant today as it ever was.