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Henry Fielding writes some of the earliest and perhaps the greatest English novels. In ‘The History of Tom Jones’, the hero is an orphan, brought up by Mr Allworthy on his country estate, until Tom is banished to make his own fortune in London. Fielding chats wittily and with poignantly across the two and a half centuries between him and the reader. Fielding pauses the action and explains with humour what he is doing, why he has developed the characters in this way, or explains what a novel is and how it differs from a play. It is astonishing to find the author chatting to the reader in this way and for it to feel so relevant. Fielding’s first full-length novel, ‘Joseph Andrews’ is both high-brow and extremely funny. Each of the many characters are endearing as they go about their lives. Again, the story is frequently interrupted by an imperfect narrator, with hilarious results and there are several very amusing tangents and essays. Fielding satirizes almost every part of the world around him: doctors, the legal system, priests and the upper class. Even though the book was written in eighteenth century England, some of the observations are hilarious because they are still accurate today. Shamela is a brilliant parody of Samuel Richardson’s Pamela, in which a morally upstanding servant girl resists the sexual advances of her master and is eventually ‘rewarded’ with marriage. Fielding’s novel has a far more wily, strong-willed and sexually honest heroine. She uses mock bashfulness and reserve as her means of winning herself a rich spouse.
