Henry Fielding

For other people named Henry Fielding, see Henry Fielding (disambiguation).
Henry Fielding
Born 22 April 1707
Sharpham, 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
Genre satire, picaresque
Literary movement Enlightenment, Augustan Age
Relatives Sarah Fielding John Fielding

Henry Fielding (22 April 1707 – 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]

Writer: dramatist and novelist

Fielding was born at Sharpham and was educated at Eton College, where he established a lifelong friendship with William Pitt the Elder.[2] 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.[3] In 1728, he travelled to Leiden to study classics and law at the University.[2] 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.[2][4] 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 Craddock and two children, he became a barrister.[2][4]

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.

Henry Fielding, about 1743, etching by Jonathan Wild

Fielding never stopped writing political satire and satires of current arts and letters. The Tragedy of Tragedies (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 with Joseph Andrews (1742), an original work supposedly dealing with Pamela's brother, Joseph.[2] Although 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.
The Roast Beef of Old England
Henry Fielding wrote "The Roast Beef of Old England", which is used by both the Royal Navy and the United States Marine Corps, in 1731. Richard Leveridge later arranged it. This version is performed by the United States Navy Band.
Problems playing this file? See media help.

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; this was one of a number of small pamphlets and cost sixpence at the time.[5] 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.

Marriages

Fielding married his first wife, Charlotte Craddock, in 1734.[6] Charlotte, on whom he later modelled the heroines of both Tom Jones and Amelia, died in 1744. By her he had five children, of whom a lone daughter, Henrietta, would survive childhood only to die at the age of 23, having already been "in deep decline" when she married military engineer James Gabriel Montresor months before. Three years after Charlotte's death, disregarding public opinion, he married her former maid, Mary Daniel, who was pregnant.[4] Mary bore five children, three daughters who died young and sons William and Allen.[7]

The law: jurist and magistrate

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.[8]

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.[9]

Henry Fielding's grave in the cemetery of the Church of England St. George's Church, Lisbon

In January 1752 Fielding started a fortnightly 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 then published "Examples of the interposition of Providence in the Detection and Punishment of Murder (1752), a treatise in which, rejecting the deistic and materialistic visions of the world, he wrote in favor of the belief in God's presence and divine judgement,[10] arguing that the rise of murder rates was due to neglect of the Christian religion.[11] In 1753 he would write Proposals for making an effectual Provision for the Poor.

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[4] two months later. His tomb is in the city's English Cemetery (Cemitério Inglês), which is now the graveyard of St. George's Church, Lisbon.

Legacy

In the operetta Patience of 1881 by Gilbert and Sullivan, Colonel Calverley sings: "The humour of Fielding, which sounds contradictory".

Partial list of works

References

  1. ↑ "Henry Fielding (1707–1754)". The Literary Encyclopedia. Retrieved 2009-09-09.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 "Henry Fielding". The Dorset Page. Retrieved 2009-09-09.
  3. ↑ Margaret Drabble, ed. (1985). The Oxford Companion to English Literature. Oxford University Press. pp. 347–348.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 "Henry Fielding (1707–1754)". Books and writers. Retrieved 2009-09-09.
  5. ↑ Cross, Wilbur L. (1918). The History of Henry Fielding, vol. 2. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
  6. ↑ "Henry Fielding (I1744)". Stanford University. Retrieved 2011-07-27.
  7. ↑ Battestin, Martin C. (2000). A Henry Fielding Companion. Westport, CT: Greenwood. pp. 10, 15.
  8. ↑ "Henry Fielding". Spartacus Educational. Retrieved 2009-09-09.
  9. ↑ "Words, Words, Words", From the Beginnings to the 18th Century, La Spiga languages, 2003.
  10. ↑ Fielding, Henry. 1988. An Enquiry Into the Causes of the Late Increase of Robbers and Related Writings. Oxford University Press, p. IXXXIII
  11. ↑ Valier, Claire. 2005. Crime and Punishment in Contemporary Culture. Routledge. p. 20

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