| Henry Fielding | |
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| Born | 22 April 1707 Sharpham, Glastonbury, Somerset, England |
| Died | 8 October 1754 (aged 47) Lisbon, Kingdom of Portugal |
| Pen name | "Captain Hercules Vinegar", also some works published anonymously |
| Occupation | Novelist, dramatist |
| Nationality | English |
| Period | 1728–54 |
| Genres | satire, picaresque |
| Literary movement | Enlightenment, Augustan Age |
| Relative(s) | Sara Banerji (1900s author) |
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Henry Fielding (Sharpham, 22 April 1707 – near Lisbon, 8 October 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 has a significant place in the history of law-enforcement, having founded (with his half-brother John) what some have called London's first police force, the Bow Street Runners, using his authority as a magistrate. His younger sister, Sarah, also became a successful writer.[1]
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Fielding married his first wife, Charlotte Craddock, in 1734. She died in 1744.[2] In 1747 he married his wife's former maid, Mary Daniel. She was pregnant at the time of their marriage. Mary bore five children, three of whom died young.
Fielding was educated at Eton College, where he established a lifelong friendship with William Pitt the Elder.[3] 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.[4] In 1728, he travelled to Leiden to study classics and law at the University.[3] 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 response to his activities.[3][5] The particular play that triggered the Licensing Act was 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.[3][5]
His lack of financial sense meant that he and his family often endured periods of poverty, but he was 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". 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 Samuel Richardson's Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded, Fielding took to writing novels in 1741 and his first major success was Shamela, an anonymous parody of 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.[3] 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 (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 modelled the heroines of both Tom Jones and Amelia, died in 1744. Three years later he, disregarding public opinion, married Charlotte's former maid, Mary, who was pregnant.[5]
Despite this scandal, his consistent anti-Jacobitism 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.[6]
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. 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.[7]
In January 1752, Fielding started a biweekly periodical titled The Covent-Garden Journal, which he would publish under the pseudonym of "Sir Alexander Drawcansir, Knt. Censor of Great Britain" until November of the same year. In this periodical, Fielding directly challenged the "armies of Grub Street" and the contemporary periodical writers of the day in a conflict that would eventually become the Paper War of 1752–3.
Fielding's ardent commitment to the cause of justice as a great humanitarian in the 1750s (for instance, his support of Elizabeth Canning) coincided with a rapid deterioration in his health. This continued to such an extent that he went abroad to Portugal in 1754 in search of a cure. Gout, asthma and other afflictions made him use crutches. He died in Lisbon[5] two months later. His tomb is located inside the city's English Cemetery (Cemitério Inglês).
The first collected edition New International Encyclopedia of Fielding was Works (London, 1762); other editions are those edited respectively by Scott and Roscoe (Edinburgh, 1840), by Browne (London, 1871), by Gosse (New York, 1898), and by Saintbury (New York and London, 1902). Fielding's first biographer was Arthur Murray, whose essay on Fielding's life and genius was introduced in the first collected series. (See above). The best life is that of Martin Battestin and Ruthe Battestin, Henry Fielding: A Life (London & New York: Routledge, 1989).
A survey of Fielding scholarship and criticism by H. George Hahn, "Henry Fielding: An Annotated Bibliography" (Metuchen, NJ and London: Scarecrow Press, 1979). Full and excellent critical introductions to each of Fielding's important works will be found in G. E. Saintbury's edition of the Works (ten volumes, London, 1898).
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