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the experience of reading in Britain, from 1450 to 1945...

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Listings for Author:  

Henry Fielding

 

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Henry Fielding : Tom Jones

'I am working at Richardson now, and will send you the paper by the end of the week. I suppose I ought to be ashamed to confess that, tedious as he often is, I feel less difficulty in getting through him than in reading Fielding, and that as a matter of taste I actually prefer Lovelace to Tom Jones! I suppose that is one of the differences between men and women which even Ladies' Colleges will not set to rights.'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Margaret Oliphant      Print: Book

  

Henry Fielding : 

"Of my earliest days at school I have little to say, but that they were very happy ones, chiefly because I was left at liberty, and in the vacations, to read whatever books I liked ... I read all Fielding's works, Don Quixote, Gil Blas, and any part of Swift that I liked." (Wordsworth, Prose Works vol. 3 p.372).

Century: 1700-1799     Reader/Listener/Group: William Wordsworth      Print: Book

  

Henry Fielding : Tom Jones

'Thomas Jones recalled that his mother, a Rhymney straw-hat maker, "was fifty before she read a novel and to her dying day she had not completely grasped the nature of fiction or of drama". When she read Tom Jones, "she believed every word of it and could not conceive how a man could sit down and invent the story of Squire Allworthy and Sophia and Tom out of his head".

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group:      Print: Book

  

Henry Fielding : 

...a desire for information which was by no means whollly neglected even whilst I was an apprentice, I always found some time for reading, and I almost always found the means to procure books, useful books, not Novels. My reading was of course devoid of method, and very desultory. I had read in English the only language in which I could read, the histories of Greece and Rome, and some translated works of Greek and Roman writers. Hume, Smollett, Fieldings novels and Robertsons works, some of Humes Essays, some Translations from french writers, and much on geography -some books on Anatomy and Surgery, some relating to Science and the Arts, and many Magazines. I had worked all the Problems in the Introduction to Guthries Geography, and had made some small progress in Geometry.

Century: 1700-1799     Reader/Listener/Group: Francis Place      Print: Book

  

Henry Fielding : 

'Robert White... had somewhat more progressive tastes [than Robert Story], which extended to Shelley, Keats, Childe Harold, and The Lady of the Lake. But his reading stopped short at the Romantics. In 1873 he confessed that he could not stomach avant-garde poets like Tennyson. "As for our modern novel-writers - Dickens, Thackeray and others I do not care to read them, since Smollett, Fielding and Scott especially are all I desire".'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Robert White      Print: Book

  

Henry Fielding : 

[due to the fact that books in working class communities were generally cheap out of copyright reprints, not new works] Welsh collier Joseph Keating was able to immerse himself in Swift, Pope, Fielding, Richarson, Smollett, Goldsmith, Sheridan, Goldsmith, Keats, Byron, Shelley, Dickens and Greek philosophy, as well as the John Dicks edition of Vanity Fair in weekly installments. The common denominator among these authors was that they were all dead. "Volumes by living authors were too high-priced for me", Keating explained. "Our schoolbooks never mentioned living writers; and the impression in my mind was that an author, to be a living author, must be dead and that his work was all the better if he died of neglect and starvation".'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Keating      Print: Book

  

Henry Fielding : unknown

Byron's "Detached Thoughts" (15 October 1821-18 May 1822), 5 November 1821: 'I have lately been reading Fielding over again.'

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron      Print: Book

  

Henry Fielding : Tom Jones

'Rose... remembers her father reading to them - Dickens, Scott, Robinson Crusoe, Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Meredith, Tom Jones, The Three Musketeers, Don Quixote, and, curiously, The Origin of Species'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: George Macaulay      Print: Book

  

Henry Fielding : Amelia

Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, Friday 7 November 1800: 'A cold rainy morning ... I working and reading Amelia.'

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Wordsworth      Print: Book

  

Henry Fielding : Tom Jones

Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere Journal, Tuesday 25 November 1800: 'Very ill ... better in the Evening -- read Tom Jones ...'

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Dorothy Wordsworth      Print: Book

  

Henry Fielding : [unknown]

'On learning that [Hall] Caine was to present twenty-four lectures in Liverpool on "Prose Fiction" ... [D. G. Rossetti] insisted that he read the works [of English novelists] aloud to him; hence "I read Fielding and Smollett, Richardson, Radcliffe, 'Monk' Lewis, Thackeray and Dickens, under a running fire of comment and criticism from Rossetti".'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Hall Caine      Print: Book

  

Henry Fielding : 

?To my mind Hugo is far more dramatic in spirit than Fielding, though his method involves (as you show exceedingly well) a use of scenery & background wh. would hardly be admissible in drama. I am not able ? I fairly confess ? to define the dramatic element in Hugo or to say why it is absent from Fielding & Richardson. Yet surely Hugo?s own dramas are a sufficient proof that a drama may be romantic as well as a novel.?

Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Leslie Stephen      Print: Book

  

Henry Fielding : The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling

?In the works of Fielding our credulity is not taxed for superfluous admiration by any of those faultless monsters? Fielding?s chief excellence appears to lie in the delineation of his characters that combine simplicity, ignorance and benevolence. His Parson Adams and his Partridge will still induce us to tolerate even Joseph Andrews and Tom Jones. His mind appeared incapable of concocting a character of real virtue. His Allworthy is a prosing, self sufficient moral pedant; in Joseph Andrews virtue is ridiculous; in Tom Jones vice is honourable. Nobody now reads either but the school boy, and one of the earliest signs of an improved taste, and an advancement in Christian morality, is the rejection of both.?

Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Maturin      Print: Book

  

Henry Fielding : 

'As a collier [Joseph Keating]... heard a co-worker sigh, "Heaven from all creatures hides the book of fate". Keating was stunned: "You are quoting Pope". "Ayh", replied his companion, "me and Pope do agree very well". Keating had himself been reading Pope, Fielding, Smollett, Goldsmith and Richardson in poorly printed paperbacks. Later he was reassigned to a less demanding job at a riverside colliery pumping station, which allowed him time to tackle Swift, Sheridan, Byron, Keats, Shelley and Thackeray'.

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Keating      Print: Book

  

Henry Fielding : Tom Jones

In "Yesterday's Child 1890-1909" (1937), Beryl Lee Booker remembered 'trying "Tom Jones", but abandoning it for "What Katy Did"' whilst a child (p.31).

Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Beryl Lee Booker      Print: Book

  

Henry Fielding : 

'"[Penny dreadfuls] were thrilling, absolutely without sex interest, and of a high moral standard", explained London hatmaker Frederick Willis. "No boy would be any the worse for reading them and in many cases they encouraged and developed a love of reading that led him onwards and upwards on the fascinating path of literature. It was the beloved 'bloods' that first stimulated my love of reading, and from them I set out on the road to Shaw and Wells, Thackeray and Dickens, Fielding, Shakespeare and Chaucer".'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Frederick Willis      Print: Book

  

Henry Fielding : [unknown]

'[Neville] Cardus read only boys' papers until quite suddenly, in adolescence, he dove into Dickens and Mark Twain. "Then, without scarcely a bridge-passage, I was deep in the authors who to this day I regard the best discovered in a lifetime" - Fielding, Browning, Hardy, Tolstoy, even Henry James. He found them all before he was twenty, with critical guidance from no one: "We must make our own soundings and chartings in the arts... so that we may all one day climb to our own peak, silent in Darien".'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Neville Cardus      Print: Book

  

Henry Fielding : Joseph Andrews

'[Harriet Grove] enjoyed novels and plays: in 1809-10, she read with pleasure in a family group a number of popular bestsellers (which in the period means largely novels by women), including Lady Morgan's "The Novice of Saint Dominick", Agnes Maria Bennett's "The Beggar Girl and her Benefactors", Edgeworth's "Tales of Andrews", "Sir Charles Grandison" and "A Sentimental Journey"'.

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Harriet Grove      Print: Book

  

Henry Fielding : Amelia (1st vol.)

'You guess that I have not read "Amelia". Indeed I have read but the first volume. I had intended to go through with it; but I found the characters and situations so wretchedly low and dirty, that I imagined I could not be interested for any one of them; and to read and not to care what became of the hero and heroine, is a task that I thought I would leave to those who had more leisure than I am blessed with'.

Century: 1700-1799     Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Richardson      Print: BookManuscript: Unknown

  

Henry Fielding : unknown

Another great source of amusement as well as knowledge, I have met with in reading almost all the best novels (Cervantes, Fielding, Smollet, Richardson, Miss Burney, Voltaire, Sterne, Le Sage, Goldsmith and others).?

Century: 1700-1799     Reader/Listener/Group: James Lackington      Print: Book

  

Henry Fielding : The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling

[Marginalia]

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge      Print: Book

  

Henry Fielding : The History of the Adventures of Joseph Andrews

[Marginalia]

Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge      Print: Book

  

Henry Fielding : The Life of Mr Jonathan Wild the Great

[Marginalia]

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Taylor Coleridge      Print: Book

  

Henry Fielding : [unknown]

'It [central London] was truly a wonder world, for I seeing it not merely with my eyes of flesh but with the eyes of heightened imagination; -seeing it not only through spectacles manufactured by an optician, but through glasses supplied by magicians names Charles Dickens, Walter Scott, William Makepeace Thackeray, Joseph Addison, Daniel Defoe, Henry Fielding, Toby Smollett, Sam Johnson and Will Shakespeare himself. Had I scraped an acquaintance with all these before I was fifteen? I knew them well! -and that was the trouble. I was book hungry, and I found a land where books were accessible in a quantity and variety sufficient to satisfy even my uncontrolled voracity.'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas A. Jackson      Print: Book

  

Henry Fielding : [unknown]

'Later on I found at the bottom of a cupboard some of volumes -Addison's "Spectator", Pope's "Homer", and a few other things. My grandmother -who also devoured books in great gulps -gave me a "Robinson Crusoe", and lent me volumes containing four "Waverley Novels" apiece. Much about the same time my father got bound up a set of Dickens's novels he had bought in weekly parts. They were in the popular quarto edition with drawings by Fred Barnard, John Mahony and others. These were a real treasure -and all the more so as my father was an ardent Dickens "fan" who rather despised Scott as a "romantic" and a "Tory". His mother (born in 1815, so old enough to have read the "Waverley Novels" when they were still comparatively new things) rather sniffed at Dickens, and definitely preferred both Scott and Thackeray. She gave me "Vanity Fair" as an antidote to "David Copperfield" and added a Shakespeare, and a bundle of "paperback" editions -Fielding, Smollett, Fennimore Cooper and Captain Marryatt.'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas A. Jackson      Print: Book

  

Henry Fielding : The Tragedy of Tragedies; or, The Life and Death of Tom Thumb the Great

?I was seized last night with a violent pain in my head (fortunately, just as I had concluded my month?s work), and was immediately ordered as much medicine as would confine an ordinary-sized horse to his stall for a week. Whether it arises from the ?influentials?, or from close application, or from worry, or from the wind cholic, to quote King Arthur, I know not; but this I know-that surely against my will, much to my disappointment, here I am, and in a gloomy and miserable state, here I must remain.?

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Dickens      Print: Unknown

  

Henry Fielding : Tom Jones

'In various letters to Osborne he mentions having received "Tom Jones" which he did not care for; "Jane Eyre" he thought a "wonderful book"; in a volume titled "British Dramatists" he thought Webster's "The Duchess of Malfi" "the best by head and shoulders"; Carlyle's "Heroes and Hero Worship" he admired "exceedingly" (he proceeded to write an essay of twenty-six notepaper pages on Carlyle); of Thackeray's "Henry Esmond" he told Osborne that he thought it a "great book", though he disliked its "overelaboration": "perhaps you may say it is merely an additional grace - but I think it stands rather in the way of true eloquence and geninely forceful tragedy, not that I deny there is both eloquence and tragedy in 'Esmond', but I think there might have been more and grander but for that elaborateness".'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Arthur Symons      Print: Book

  

Henry Fielding : The life of Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great

'Read Fielding's "Life of Jonathan Wild"; a caustic satire, in Swift's coarsest manner...'

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green      Print: Book

  

Henry Fielding : The history of the adventures of Joseph Andrews

'Read the 4th. and last Book of Fielding's "Joseph Andrews". I see no necessity for the marvellous in incident, at the conclusion of this Novel...'

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green      Print: Book

  

Henry Fielding : Amelia

'Finished Fielding's "Amelia". There is a still stronger and more disgusting taint of vulgarity, in this Novel, than in Joseph Andrews...'

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green      Print: Book

  

Henry Fielding : unknown

'Therefore, good-bye, I am going to take my beer and sardines; after which to bed and a chapter or two of Fielding.'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson      Print: Book

  

Henry Fielding : Amelia

'Read Fielding's Amelia - Sir Launcelot Greaves. a little of Tacitus - Twopenny post bag.'

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley      Print: Book

  

Henry Fielding : Tom Jones

"Je relis 'Tom Jones'. En effet, c'est ?patant". [I am re-reading "Tom Jones". In fact, it is astonishing']

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett      Print: Book

  

Henry Fielding : Tom Jones

'as soon as he was gone I finished Cigar read a few Pages of "Tom Jones" & went to bed.'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: John Buckley Castieau      Print: Book

  

Henry Fielding : History of the Adventures of Joseph Andrews

'Finish Emmeline - S. reads Joseph Andrews'

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley      Print: Book

  

Henry Fielding : History of the Adventures of Joseph Andrews

'Read Joseph Andrews'

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley      Print: Book

  

Henry Fielding : History of the Adventures of Joseph Andrews

'finish Joseph Andrews'

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley      Print: Book

  

Henry Fielding : History of Tom Jones, a foundling, The

'You ask me (pertly enough - pardon the expression) Whether I have read The Lay of the Last Minstrel - alas, only twice - And have, in addition, only the following Catalogue to subjoin of pleasing works which have come under my examination - English - Thalaba. Cowper Walker on The Revival of Italian Tragedy Southey's Tour in Spain Tommy Jones Italian - Metastasio's Olympiade Demofoonte, Giusepe riconosciuto, Gioas, La Clemenza di Tito, Catone, Regolo, Ciro, Zenobia - Tassos's Aminta - Seven Canto's of Ariosto, Il Vero Amore, an Italian novel - La bella pelegrina, La Zingana Merope, del Maffei, &c, &c, &c, &c French - None If you wish to know how I came to poke my green eyes into so many Italian books, I have this reply at your service. there has been an Italian Master here for above a month - and he brushed up for me the rusty odds an [sic] ends of his dulcet language which I had formerly picked up, & whilst he was here, & since his departure, I have done nothing but peep & pry into the works of his countrymen' [The format of SHB's list was in two columns, English and french to the left and Italian to the right]

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Sarah Harriet Burney      Print: Book

  

Henry Fielding : Tom Jones

' I've read a lot, Boswell, de Quincy, Tom Jones, Plutarch. One sits in the sun until the heat of it drives one indoors again.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Vita Sackville-West      Print: Book

  

Henry Fielding : Tom Jones

'At this precise moment I am feeling mightily morose, owing to my having foolishly embarked on Robert Elsmere and Tom Jones this afternoon.'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: John Buchan      Print: Book

  

Henry Fielding : History of Tom Jones, A Foundling

'I take this opportunity of returning you A.K.'s fragments. I do believe it has been of material service... as for A.K.'s French pasage, you will be surprised at the impression it makes on my mind - as neither more nor less than [italics] commonplace [end italics] Perhaps she has not, but I have read so many descriptions of concentrated feelings, boiling passion under [italics] un froid exterieur [end italics], dark and gloomy minds, that this strikes me as only what I have seen fifty times before [LS then critiques 'The school of Sentiment'] By her further description I should pronounce it [italics] unwholesome [italics] reading. The smallest grain of [italics] amour physique [end italics] poisons the whole, renders it literally and positively [italics] beastly [end italics], for it is describing the sensations of a brute animal. And here lies the difference between even [italics] bad [end italics] English books and the French ones, which everyone reads without blushing. Mrs Bellamy and Mrs Baddeley, two women of the town, whom I remember as actresses, wrote their Memoirs. They painted their first false steaps either as the effect of seduction, they were victims to the arts employed to ruin them, or else they had been led away by their [italics] affections [end italics]; they had conceived a violent passion for such and such a man, whom they took pains to paint as formed to captivate the [italics] heart [end italics]. Madame Roland, one of the heroines of the French Revolution, a [italics] virtuous [end italics] woman, so far as chastity goes, writes her Memoirs and tells you what were her [italics] sensations towards the opposite sex in general [end italics] (without any particular object) at 14 or 15 years old!!! And young ladies were taught to read and admire this who would not have been allowed to open "Tom Jones", where Fielding does describe [italics] l'amour physique [end italics] between Tom and Molly Seagrim, but I daresay would as soon have given Sophia an inclination to commit murder as hinted that she ever had Madame Roland's [italics] sensations[end italics], or even that Tom had them towards her'.

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Louisa, Lady Stuart      Print: Book

  

Henry Fielding : Tom Jones

'Impossible to read a Meredith as simply and fairly as a Fielding, with one eye fixed on the author's interests and the other on his achievement. [read Tom Jones & Evan Harrington when I had chicken pox, 19, and felt this strongly]'.

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster      Print: Book

  

Henry Fielding : [unknown]

'"Sir, (continued he) there is all the difference in the world between characters of nature and characters of manners; and [italics] there [end italics] is the difference between the characters of Fielding and those of Richardson. Characters of manners are very entertaining; but they are to be understood, by a more superficial observer, than characters of nature, where a man must dive into the recesses of the human heart." It always appeared to me that he estimated the compositions of Richardson too highly, and that he had an unreasonable prejudice against Fielding. In comparing those two writers, he used this expression ; "that there was as great a difference between them as between a man who knew how a watch was made, and a man who could tell the hour by looking on the dial-plate." '

Century: 1700-1799     Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson      Print: Book

  

Henry Fielding : [unknown]

'"Sir, (continued he) there is all the difference in the world between characters of nature and characters of manners; and [italics] there [end italics] is the difference between the characters of Fielding and those of Richardson. Characters of manners are very entertaining; but they are to be understood, by a more superficial observer, than characters of nature, where a man must dive into the recesses of the human heart." It always appeared to me that he estimated the compositions of Richardson too highly, and that he had an unreasonable prejudice against Fielding. In comparing those two writers, he used this expression ; "that there was as great a difference between them as between a man who knew how a watch was made, and a man who could tell the hour by looking on the dial-plate." '

Century: 1700-1799     Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell      Print: Book

  

Henry Fielding : Tom Jones

'Fielding being mentioned, Johnson exclaimed, "he was a blockhead :" and upon my expressing my astonishment at so strange an assertion, he said, "What I mean by his being a blockhead is, that he was a barren rascal." Boswell. "Will you not allow, sir, that he draws very natural pictures of human life?" Johnson. "Why, sir, it is of very low life. Richardson used to say, that had he not known who Fielding was, he should have believed he was an ostler. Sir, there is more knowledge of the heart in one letter of Richardson's than in all 'Tom Jones'. I indeed, never read 'Joseph Andrews.'" Erskine. "Surely, sir, Richardson is very tedious." Johnson. "Why, sir, if you were to read Richardson for the story, your impatience would be so much fretted that you would hang yourself. But you must read him for the sentiment, and consider the story as only giving occasion to the sentiment." I have already given my opinion of Fielding ; but I cannot refrain from repeating here my wonder at Johnson's excessive and unaccountable depreciation of one of the best writers that England has produced. "Tom Jones" has stood the test of publick opinion with such success as to have established its great merit, both for the story, the sentiments, and the manners, and also the varieties of diction, so as to leave no doubt of its having an animated truth of execution throughout.'

Century: 1700-1799     Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson      Print: Book

  

Henry Fielding : Tom Jones

'Fielding being mentioned, Johnson exclaimed, "he was a blockhead :" and upon my expressing my astonishment at so strange an assertion, he said, "What I mean by his being a blockhead is, that he was a barren rascal." Boswell. "Will you not allow, sir, that he draws very natural pictures of human life?" Johnson. "Why, sir, it is of very low life. Richardson used to say, that had he not known who Fielding was, he should have believed he was an ostler. Sir, there is more knowledge of the heart in one letter of Richardson's than in all 'Tom Jones'. I indeed, never read 'Joseph Andrews.'" Erskine. "Surely, sir, Richardson is very tedious." Johnson. "Why, sir, if you were to read Richardson for the story, your impatience would be so much fretted that you would hang yourself. But you must read him for the sentiment, and consider the story as only giving occasion to the sentiment." I have already given my opinion of Fielding ; but I cannot refrain from repeating here my wonder at Johnson's excessive and unaccountable depreciation of one of the best writers that England has produced. "Tom Jones" has stood the test of publick opinion with such success as to have established its great merit, both for the story, the sentiments, and the manners, and also the varieties of diction, so as to leave no doubt of its having an animated truth of execution throughout.'

Century: 1700-1799     Reader/Listener/Group: James Boswell      Print: Book

  

Henry Fielding : Amelia

'He told us, he read Fielding's "Amelia" through without stopping'.

Century: 1700-1799     Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson      Print: Book

  

Henry Fielding : 

'I myself like Smollet's Novels better than Fielding's; the perpetual Parody teizes one; - there is more Rapidity and Spirit in the Scotsman: though both of them knew the Husk of Life perfectly well - & for the Kernel - you must go to either Richardson or Rousseau'.

Century: 1700-1799     Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale      Print: Book

  

Henry Fielding : Tom Jones

'Was I to make a Scale of Novel Writers I should put Richardson first, then Rousseau; after them, but at an immeasurable Distance Charlotte Lenox [sic], Smollet & Fielding. The Female Quixote & Count Fathom I think far before Tom Jones or Joseph Andrews with regard to Body of Story, Height of Colouring, or General Powers of Thinking. Fielding however knew the Shell of Life - and the Kernel is but for a few.'

Century: 1700-1799     Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale      Print: Book

  

Henry Fielding : Joseph Andrews

'Was I to make a Scale of Novel Writers I should put Richardson first, then Rousseau; after them, but at an immeasurable Distance Charlotte Lenox [sic], Smollet & Fielding. The Female Quixote & Count Fathom I think far before Tom Jones or Joseph Andrews with regard to Body of Story, Height of Colouring, or General Powers of Thinking. Fielding however knew the Shell of Life - and the Kernel is but for a few.'

Century: 1700-1799     Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale      Print: Book

  

Henry Fielding : Tom Jones

'The Characters in the modern Comedies of Puff, Snake & Spatter are quite new, & peculiar to this age I think; it is to Novels & Dramatic Representations that one owes the History of Manners certainly, yet those which give one nothing else are paltry performances: witness Tom Jones and the Clandestine Marriage, yet they are the best in their kind acording to my Notion'.

Century: 1700-1799     Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale      Print: Book

  

Henry Fielding : Tom Thumb the Great

Walter Scott adapts one line from Henry Fielding's 'Tom Thumb the Great'.

Unknown
Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Scott      

  

Henry Fielding : Amelia

'Read a little more of "Amelia", which is about the worst planned story I ever read - no plan at all in fact; "Gil Blas" has always some tangled connection and momentary interest; "Don Quixote" is so intensely amusing that the want of plan is easily forgiven; but to bring on a storm merely that a hero may escape in a boat is the kind of thing I had not expected to find in what is said to be one of the first of English novels. The irony is forced, and the feeling bad; but the characters are highly and equisitely finished, and clearly conceived.'

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: John Ruskin      Print: Book

  

Henry Fielding : 

'We know comparatively little of [Jane Austen's] literary tastes. Some are peculiar. Her fondness for the gentle, close truth and quiet power of Cowper is consistent; but it is perplexing to find that the grave, moral, austere Dr. Johnson was her favourite prose writer. The coarseness of Fielding she could not forgive, and though she admired "Sir Charles Grandison," she thought Richardson tedious.'

Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Jane Austen      Print: Book

  

Henry Fielding : Amelia (volumes 1 and 2)

Catherine Talbot to Elizabeth Carter, 14 March 1752: 'I have begun reading a book which promises some laughing amusement, "The Female Quixote;" the few chapters I read to my mother last night while we were undressing were whimsical enough and not at all low. I have not read Amelia, yet, but have seen it read and commented upon much to my edification by that good Bishop of Gloucester, who seldom misses spending two or three days of the week at this deanery [...] I have been particularly delighted with some of our afternoons, when we have sat unmolested by my dressing-room fire-side, he reading Amelia (and quarreling excessively at the two first volumes) my mother and I reading or working, or following our own devices as it might happen, and every one mixing little interruptions of chat as things come into their heads; with not a single ring at the door to disturb us.'

Century: 1700-1799     Reader/Listener/Group: Martin Benson      Print: Book

  

Henry Fielding : Amelia

Elizabeth Carter to Catherine Talbot, 30 March 1751: 'How to account for Miss Mulso's unmerciful severity to Amelia is past my skill, as it does not appear that she was in very good health when she read the book.'

Century: 1700-1799     Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Mulso      Print: Book

  

Henry Fielding : Amelia

Catherine Talbot to Elizabeth Carter, 22 April 1752: 'At last we have begun Amelia, it is very entertaining. I do love Dr Harrison and the good Serjeant; and Mrs James's visit to Amelia has extremely diverted me. How many Mrs James's in that good-for-nothing London! But Mr Fielding's heroines are always silly loving runaway girls. Amelia makes an excellent wife, but why did she marry Booth?'

Century: 1700-1799     Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Talbot and family.     Print: Book

  

Henry Fielding : Miscellanies

[Elizabeth Carter to Catherine Talbot, 5 March 1755:] 'I am obliged to you for the account of the new books, not one of which have reached Deal, except some novels, which I had not patience to read through. My present study is Plato's Republic. I have got through as much as I can read of Fielding's Miscellanies, which I never saw before. Did you ever read them? and are they not extremely good and extremely bad?'

Century: 1700-1799     Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Carter      Print: Book

  

Henry Fielding : Voyage to Lisbon

[Thomas Edwards to Samuel Richardson, 28 May 1755:] 'I have lately read over with much indignation Fielding's last piece, called his Voyage to Lisbon. That a man, who had led such a life as he had, should trifle in that manner when immediate death was before his eyes, is amazing. From this book I am confirmed in what his other works had fully persuaded me of, that with all his parade of pretences to virtuous and humane affections, the fellow had no heart.'

Century: 1700-1799     Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Edwards      Print: Book

 

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