Henry Fielding
1 book in the library
Henry Fielding (1707–1754) was an English novelist, playwright and magistrate, born at Sharpham Park in Somerset and educated at Eton. In the 1730s he was one of London’s most successful playwrights, but his political satires helped bring about the Licensing Act of 1737, which ended his career in the theatre. He trained as a lawyer, and turned to the novel, beginning with Shamela (1741), a parody of Samuel Richardson’s Pamela, and continuing with Joseph Andrews (1742), Tom Jones (1749) and Amelia (1751). His comic, digressive and generous fiction helped establish the English novel as a form. As a magistrate at Bow Street in London, he and his half-brother John organised the Bow Street Runners, an early professional police force. In failing health he sailed to Lisbon in 1754, and died there that autumn.
