Sir Walter Scott called Fielding ‘the father of the English novel.’ He was the first English novelist to approach the genre with a fully worked-out theory in Joseph Andrews, Tom Jones and Amelia, the comic epics or domestic epics. He established the tradition of realism presented in panoramic surveys of contemporary society that dominated English fiction until the end of the 19th century.
He was the first writer and a novelist to break away from the epistolary method. Fielding devised a new structure and theory that laid the foundation for the works of Charles Dickens, William Makepeace Thackeray and the Victorian novelists.
At every turn in his career – as novelist, dramatist, journalist and magistrate – reader feels great directing intelligence. He was a blissful innovator, creating new ideas, forms and making practical plans. He also pushed the boundaries of artistic forms.
He provoked the introduction of censorship in theatres with his political satire The Historical Register for 1736. He then turned to writing picaresque novels. Fielding was also responsible for the formation of the Bow Street Runners in 1749.
Chronology of Life
April 22, 1707 Henry Fielding was born at Sharpham Park, Glastonbury, Somerset.
1718
His mother Sarah died.
1719-24 Attended school at Eton.
1734 Married Charlotte Cradock.
1737 Stage Licensing Act ended career as playwright.
Studied law at Middle Temple.
1744 Charlotte died.
1747 Married Mary Daniel.
1748 Became Justice of Peace for Westminster.
1754 Resigned from Justice of Peace, due to ill health.
October 8, 1754 Died near Lisbon in Portugal.
Chronology of Works
1728 The Masquerade (first published poem) and Live in Several Masques (first play) were published.
1730 The Tragedy of Tragedies and The Grub-Street Opera were published.
1732 The Modern Husband and The Covent-Garden Tragedy were published.
1733 The Miser was published.
1736 Pasquin was published.
1737 Eurydice, The Historical Register, Eurydice Hiss’d were published.
1739-41 Edited the ‘Champion’.
1741 Shamela was published.
1742 Joseph Andrews and Fall of Walpole were published.
1743 Miscellanies, 3 Volumes including Jonathan Wild and A Journey from This World to the Next were published.
1744 Preface to Sarah Fielding
1745-46 Jacobite Rebellion was published. Edited ‘True Patriot’.
1747-48 Edited the ‘Jocobite’s Journal'.
1749 Tom Jones was published.
1751 An Enquiry into the Causes of the late Increase of Robbers and Amelia were published.
1752 Edited the ‘Covent-Garden Journal’.
1754 Revised version of Jonathan Wild was published.
1755 The Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon was published posthumously.
• "When children are doing nothing, they are doing mischief."
• "There is not in the universe a more ridiculous, nor a more contemptible animal, than a proud clergyman. "
• "It is not death, but dying, which is terrible."
• "Guilt has very quick ears to an accusation."
• "Love and scandal are the best sweeteners of tea."
• "Some folks rail against other folks, because other folks have what some folks would be glad of."
• "There is a set of religious, or rather moral, writings which teach that virtue is the certain road to happiness, and vice to misery in this world. A very wholesome and comfortable doctrine, and to which we have but one objection, namely, that it is not true."
• "There is nothing a man of good sense dreads in a wife so much as her having more sense than himself."
• "It is not death, but dying, which is terrible."
• "Some folks rail against other folks, because other folks have what some folks would be glad of."
• "Great joy, especially after a sudden change of circumstances, is apt to be silent, and dwells rather in the heart than on the tongue."
• "All Nature wears one universal grin." Tom Thumb the Great. Act i. Sc. 1.
• "When I 'm not thank'd at all, I 'm thank'd enough;
I 've done my duty, and I 've done no more.
• "Penny saved is a penny got." The Miser. Act iii. Sc. 12.
