Henry Fielding

Early life

Henry Fielding was born on 22 April 1707 at Sharpham Park, the seat of his mother's family in Sharpham, Somerset. He was the son of Lt.-Gen. Edmund Fielding and Sarah Gould, daughter of Sir Henry Gould. A scion of the Earl of Denbigh, his father was nephew of William Fielding, 3rd Earl of Denbigh.

Educated at Eton College, Fielding began a lifelong friendship with William Pitt the Elder. His mother died when he was 11. A suit for custody was brought by his grandmother against his charming but irresponsible father, Lt Gen. Edmund Fielding. The settlement placed Henry in his grandmother's care, but he continued to see his father in London.

In 1725, Henry tried to abduct his cousin Sarah Andrews, with whom he was infatuated, while she was on her way to church. He fled to avoid prosecution.

In 1728, Fielding travelled to Leiden to study classics and law at the university. Penury forced him back to London, where he began writing for the theatre. Some of his work savagely criticised the government of Prime Minister Sir Robert Walpole.

Dramatist and novelist

Returning from his studies at Leiden late in 1729, Fielding “came up to London … thrown upon his own resources” and determined to earn his living by the pen. Early the next year he enlisted fellow writer James Ralph to provide the prologue for his comedy The Temple Beau (licensed January 1730). Ralph’s recently published miscellany The Touch-Stone; or, The Taste of the Town (1728; re-issued 1731) urged dramatists to abandon imported opera and classical heroes in favour of “home-bred” stories, mocked the vogue for “merry Tragedies,” and celebrated the satirical possibilities of puppet shows and fair-ground spectacle.

Fielding’s response was almost instantaneous. The Author’s Farce; or, The Pleasures of the Town opened at the Haymarket on 30 March 1730 with a concluding puppet-show whose dramatis personae—Don Tragedio, Signior Opera, Monsieur Pantomime, Mrs Novel, Punch and Jack Pudding—mirror the catalogue in Ralph’s treatise. Its dialogue repeats Ralph’s gibes at Bartholomew and Southwark fairs and even alludes to the recent “rabbit-woman” hoax of 1726. Barely a month later, on 24 April 1730, Fielding produced the two-act afterpiece Tom Thumb (expanded in 1731 as The Tragedy of Tragedies). Echoing Ralph’s programme, the preface hails “home-bred Subjects,” the prologue ridicules tragedies that aim chiefly to raise laughter, and the play itself casts a diminutive hero amid outsized props while repeating the comic story of the protagonist “dropp’d in a pudding.” These two farces mark Fielding’s decisive pivot from polite comedy to the satirical burlesque that would dominate his dramatic output throughout the 1730s and shape the ironic voice of his later novels.

According to George R. Levine, Henry Fielding, in his first writings used two forms of "rhetorical poses" that were popular during the eighteenth century. Henry Fielding would construct "the non-ironic pseudonym such as Addison and Steele used in the Spectator, and the ironic mask or Persona, such as Swift used in A Modest Proposal." The Theatrical Licensing Act 1737 is said to be a direct response to his activities in writing for the theatre. Although the play that triggered the act was the unproduced, anonymously authored The Golden Rump, Fielding's dramatic satires had set the tone. Once it was passed, political satire on stage became all but impossible. Fielding retired from the theatre and resumed his legal career to support his wife Charlotte Craddock and two children by becoming a barrister, joining the Middle Temple in 1737 and being called to the bar there in 1740.

Sister

Fielding's younger sister, Sarah, also became a successful writer. Her novel The Governess, or The Little Female Academy (1749) is thought to be the first in English aimed expressly at children.

Marriages

Fielding married Charlotte Craddock in 1734 at the Church of St Mary in Charlcombe, Somerset. She died in 1744, and he later modelled the heroines of Tom Jones and of Amelia on her. They had five children. Their only daughter Henrietta died at the age of 23, having already been "in deep decline" when she married a military engineer, James Gabriel Montresor, some months before. Three years after Charlotte's death, Fielding disregarded public opinion by marrying her former maid Mary Daniel, who was pregnant. Mary bore five children: three daughters who died young, and two sons, William and Allen.

Jurist and magistrate

Despite the scandal, Fielding's consistent anti-Jacobitism and support for the Church of England led to his appointment a year later as Westminster's chief magistrate, while his literary career went from strength to strength. Most of his work concerned London's criminal population of thieves, informers, gamblers and prostitutes. Though living in a corrupt and callous society, he became noted for impartial judgements, incorruptibility and compassion for those whom social inequities led into crime. The income from his office ("the dirtiest money upon earth") dwindled as he refused to take money from the very poor. Joined by his younger half-brother John, he helped found what some call London's first police force, the Bow Street Runners, in 1749.

According to the historian G. M. Trevelyan, the Fieldings were two of the best magistrates in 18th-century London, who did much to enhance judicial reform and improve prison conditions. Fielding's influential pamphlets and enquiries included a proposal for abolishing public hangings. This did not, however, imply opposition to capital punishment as such – as is evident, for example, in his presiding in 1751 over the trial of the notorious criminal James Field, finding him guilty in a robbery and sentencing him to hang. John Fielding, despite being blind by then, succeeded his older brother as chief magistrate, becoming known as the "Blind Beak of Bow Street" for his ability to recognise criminals by their voices alone.

In January 1752, Fielding started a fortnightly, The Covent-Garden Journal, published under the pseudonym "Sir Alexander Drawcansir, Knt., Censor of Great Britain" until November of that year. Here Fielding challenged the "armies of Grub Street" and periodical writers of the day in a conflict that became the Paper War of 1752–1753.

Fielding then published Examples of the Interposition of Providence in the Detection and Punishment of Murder (1752), a treatise rejecting deistic and materialistic visions of the world in favour of belief in God's presence and divine judgement, arguing that the murder rate was rising due to neglect of the Christian religion. In 1753 he wrote Proposals for Making an Effectual Provision for the Poor.

Death

Fielding's humanitarian commitment to justice in the 1750s, for instance, in support of Elizabeth Canning, coincided with rapid deterioration in his health. Gout, asthma and cirrhosis of the liver left him on crutches, and with other afflictions sent him to Portugal in 1754 to seek a cure. He died two months later in Lisbon, reportedly in pain and mental distress. His tomb there is in the British Cemetery (Cemitério Inglês), the graveyard of St. George's Church, Lisbon.

List of works

Novels

An Apology for the Life of Mrs. Shamela Andrews – novella, 1741

The History of the Adventures of Joseph Andrews and his Friend, Mr. Abraham Adams – 1742

The Life and Death of Jonathan Wild, the Great – 1743, ironic treatment of Jonathan Wild, a notorious underworld figure of the time. Published as Volume 3 of Miscellanies

The Female Husband or the Surprising History of Mrs Mary alias Mr George Hamilton, who was convicted of having married a young woman of Wells and lived with her as her husband, taken from her own mouth since her confinement – pamphlet, fictionalized report, 1746

The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling – 1749

A Journey from this World to the Next – 1749

Amelia – 1751

Partial list of poems

The Masquerade – (Fielding's first publication)

Part of Juvenal's Sixth Satire, Modernized in Burlesque Verse

Plays

Love in Several Masques (1728)

Rape upon Rape; or, The Justice Caught in his own Trap (1730), also known as The Coffee-House Politician, played in rep with Tom Thumb the Great

Tom Thumb the Great: A Burlesque Tragedy (1730)

The Temple Beau (1730)

The Author's Farce; and The Pleasures of the Town (1730)

The Letter Writers, or A New Way to Keep a Wife at Home: A Farce (1731), originally an afterpiece to The Tragedy of Tragedies

The Tragedy of Tragedies: or the Life and Death of Tom Thumb the Great (1731), a revision of Tom Thumb the Great

The Coffee-House Politician, or The Justice Caught in his own Trap, A Comedy (1730–31), a reworking of Rape upon Rape. In 1730, another act was added to the play, titled The Battle of the Poets (author unknown).

The Old Debauchees (1732), originally titled The Despairing Debauchee. Later revived as The Becauchees; or, The Jesuit Caught

The Covent-Garden Tragedy (1732), originally appeared in rep with The Old Debauchees, but only played one night. Eventually revived in rep with Don Quixote in England

The Mock Doctor: or The Dumb Lady Cur'd (1732), adapted from Molière's Le Médecin malgré lui, played in rep with The Old Debauchees, as a replacement for The Covent-Garden Tragedy

The Welsh Opera (1731), originally a companion piece to The Tragedy of Tragedies

The Grub Street Opera (1731), Fieldings only closet drama, expanded from his play The Welsh Opera

Miscellaneous writings

translator of ‘’The military history of Charles XII, King of Sweden, written by the express order of his Majesty, by M. Gustaf Adlerfelt Gustavus Adlerfeld, Chamberlain to the King. To which is added, an exact account of the Battle of Pultowa, with a Journal of the King's Retreat to Bender. Illustrated with plans of the Battles and Sieges.’’ (London, 1740).

Miscellanies – collection of works, 1743, contained the poem "Part of Juvenal's Sixth Satire, Modernized in Burlesque Verse"

"Examples of the interposition of Providence in the Detection and Punishment of Murder containing above thirty cases in which this dreadful crime has been brought to light in the most extraordinary and miraculous manner; collected from various authors, ancient and modern" (1752)

The Covent-Garden Journal – periodical, 1752

The Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon – travel narrative, 1755