Henry Fielding

This is the second volume of Fielding's Miscellanies, first published as a three-volume set in 1743. Its major work is the fantasy A Journey from This World to the Next, Fielding's richest and most extensive piece of prose fiction outside his three novels and Jonathan Wild. Its theme, described by Gibbon as `the history of human nature', is the excoriation of false greatness and over-weening ambition, one of the great moral ideas of the age. The annotation and commentary to this edition present new evidence about Fielding's manipulation of historical sources in the Journey, which is shown to be both artistically complete and thematically consistent with the other material in the Miscellanies. The remaining two works in this volume are both plays which Fielding included at a late stage of planning for the book: the farce Eurydice, a burlesque of mythological figures who function as vehicles for topical satire, and The Wedding Day, a revision of an intrigue comedy written early in his career but staged for the first time in 1743, only a few months before the Miscellanies appeared. The introduction reviews this period of Fielding's career and describes the circumstances leading up to the original publication of Miscellanies by subscription, and the historical and biographical contexts of the works included in Volume Two. The text follows the significant features of the 1743 presentation, as far as possible; the Greg-Bowers `Rationale' hitherto observed in the Wesleyan Edition is refined and augmented by more recent textual theorizing. The full,uncensored text of The Wedding Day, from Larpent MS 39 in the Huntington Library, is given as an appendix to the censored form published in Miscellanies.

As Henry Fielding's last effort at sustained journalism, the Covent-Garden Journal (1752) significantly reflects the literary, moral, and social ideas of a major novelist in the final years of his life. Freed from the burden of political propagandizing which had dominated his earlier journalism, Fielding here addressed himself directly to social satire, literary criticism, and moral instruction in essays that are strikingly rooted in the everyday life of mid-century London. The Journal is thus an essential text not only for students of Fielding but for anyone concerned with the social and literary history of the period. The general introduction explains the connection between the Journal and the brief pamphlet A Plan of the Universal Register-Office (1751) and places them in Fielding's career; it then describes the journalistic background, major themes, and immediate reception of the Covent-Garden Journal. Full explanatory notes are provided for all topical and historical allusions. The text of the Plan has not been reprinted since the eighteenth century. The present text of the Journal, incorporating a recent discovery of revisions in Fielding's hand, offers in an appendix a column about Fielding's magistracy not previously reprinted. Other appendices provide a complete record of all textual amendations.

An Enquiry into the Causes of the Late Increase of Robbers, and Related Writings provides critical unmodernized texts of Henry Fielding's legal and social pamphlets during the period 1749 to 1753, when Fielding served as magistrate for the City and Liberty of Westminster and County of Middlesex. The texts, for the first time, are fully annotated, and a lengthy introduction places them in their biographical and intellectual context, and provides a detailed account of their publication and reception. Five of the six pamphlets included in this volume clearly serve the interests of the Pelham Administration. There is, however, no evidence to show that Fielding wrote any of the pamphlets at the invitation or command of figures of power within the Pelham Administration; instead he appears simply to have seized those opportunities appropriate to his office to further government interests or, as with An Enquiry into the Causes of the Late Increase of Robbers (1751) and A Proposal for Making an Effectual Provision for the Poor (1753), offered his own solutions to problems which Parliament was currently debating.

An accurate text of Shamela (Fielding’s satire of Samuel Richardson’s Pamela, the most popular epistolary novel of the eighteenth century) as well as An Essay on the Knowledge of the Characters of Men, selections from The Champion, and the Preface to The Adventures of David Simple are also included. All of the texts are fully annotated. "Backgrounds" contains generous extracts from works that Fielding satirized—Pamela and Conyer Middleton’s Dedication to the Life of Cicero—and emulated—Gil Blas and selections from Don Quixote, the Roman Comique, and Le Paysan Parvenu. The section concludes with a general explanation of the political and religious contexts in which Joseph Andrews was written. "Criticism" offers a broad range of responses to the novel. Contemporary assessments include selected letters of Thomas Gray, William Shenstone, Samuel Richardson, and others as well as commentary from The Student, or Oxford and Cambridge Monthly Miscellany, by William Hazlitt, James Beattie, and Sarah Fielding and Jane Collier. Modern assessments are by Mark Spilka, Dick Taylor, Jr., Martin Battestin, Sheldon Sacks, Morris Golden, Brian McCrea, and Homer Goldberg. A Selected Bibliography is also included.

A substantial amount of the energy which Henry Fielding put into his writing was invested in political journalism and pamphleteering. Indeed, next to his prose fiction and his plays, his political journalism looms largest, and reveals significant aspects of Fielding the man. This volume contains three pamphlets - the Serious Address, the History of the Present Rebellion, and the Dialogue between the Devil, the Pope, and the Pretender - and one journal, the True Patriot of 1745-6. Coming from what may be called the second period of Fielding's intensive political journalism, they are all informed by the same political purpose: to deal with the crisis represented by the Jacobite uprising known as the 'Forty-Five' and with the implications this event was perceived to have for the Pelham administration in general, and for its new 'patriot' allies in particular. As with other volumes in the edition, there is a detailed introduction, textual introduction, full annotation throughout, and an index.

The Wesleyan edition of Tom Jones is widely acknowledged as the best available, and this new paperback reproduces the handsomely composed text and notes of that edition. A new Critical Introduction, a brief chronology of Fielding's life, and a selected bibliography of relevant criticism especially designed for student use have been added. The map – A Geography of Tom Jones – has been retained, while the General and Textual Introduction and six bibliographical Appendices of the two volume clothbound edition have been omitted. "This edition offers a critical unmodernized text of Tom Jones. The text is critical in that it has been established by application of analytical criticism to the evidence of the various documentary forms in which the novel has appeared. It is unmodernized in that every effort has been made to present the text in as close a form to Fielding's own inscription and final revision as the surviving documents permit, subject only to normal editorial regulations." - from the Textual Introduction

A scholarly edition of a work by Henry Fielding. The edition presents an authoritative text, together with an introduction, commentary notes, and scholarly apparatus.

A scholarly edition of a work by Henry Fielding. The edition presents an authoritative text, together with an introduction, commentary notes, and scholarly apparatus.

A scholarly edition of a work by Henry Fielding. The edition presents an authoritative text, together with an introduction, commentary notes, and scholarly apparatus.

A scholarly edition of works by Henry Fielding. The edition presents an authoritative text, together with an introduction, commentary notes, and scholarly apparatus.

A scholarly edition of works by Henry Fielding. The edition presents an authoritative text, together with an introduction, commentary notes, and scholarly apparatus.

A scholarly edition of a work by Henry Fielding. The edition presents an authoritative text, together with an introduction, commentary notes, and scholarly apparatus.

A new edition of a satire on Richardson's PAMELA, featuring the character of Parson Adams. With explanatory notes by A R Humphreys.