Fielding, Henry

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English novelist. His greatest work, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling (1749), which he described as ‘a comic epic poem in prose’, was an early landmark in the development of the English novel, realizing for the first time in English the form's potential for memorable characterization, coherent plotting, and perceptive analysis. The vigour of its comic impetus, descriptions of high and low life in town and country, and its variety of characters made it immediately popular. Fielding gave a new prominence to dialogue in his work.

Fielding was born at Sharpham Park in Somerset and educated at Eton. He moved to London in 1724 where he led a dissipated life for some years before beginning his dramatic career with Love in Several Masques (1728). The play was not a success and Fielding swapped London for the Netherlands, where he studied at the University of Leiden. Returning to England a year later, Fielding began writing again, publishing several comedies and farces, including his burlesque (mocking imitation) play, Tom Thumb (1730). In 1734 Fielding married Charlotte Cradock and bought the Little Theatre in the Haymarket, where he produced Pasquin (1736) and The Historical Register (1737), but the Licensing Act of 1737 censored the latter for its powerful satire, and thus ended his career as a dramatist. He studied law at the Middle Temple and was called to the Bar in 1740. Literature, however, was his main preoccupation After his wife's death in 1744, Fielding turned again to law, but in 1745 was once more engaged in literature as editor of the True Patriot and afterwards of The Jacobite's Journal. In 1747 he defied convention by marrying Mary Daniel, who had been his first wife's maid and his children's nurse. He was appointed Justice of the Peace for Middlesex and Westminster in 1748. In failing health, he went to recuperate in Lisbon in 1754, and he died and was buried there.

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