Author

Books by Henry Fielding

Henry Fielding (1707–1754) was an English novelist, playwright, and magistrate who wrote some of the most influential prose fiction of the eighteenth century. He began as a playwright, was forced out of the theatre by the Licensing Act of 1737, and turned to novel writing. Shamela (1741) and Joseph Andrews (1742) were parodies of Samuel Richardson's Pamela. Tom Jones (1749) is his masterpiece and one of the founding texts of the English novel. He also co-founded the Bow Street Runners, a proto-police force, and published a landmark report on the causes of London's crime. He died at forty-seven in Lisbon.