Henry Fielding

Henry Fielding was an English novelist, dramatist and magistrate, born on 22 April 1707 at Sharpham, in the Kingdom of Great Britain, and died on 8 October 1754. He first made his name in the London theatre, writing farces and satires that mocked politicians and the fashions of the day. When new laws on theatre licensing ended that career, he turned to law and later served as a magistrate in London, where he worked on crime and social reform.

Fielding is best remembered as one of the founders of the English novel. In books such as Joseph Andrews and Tom Jones he combined lively plots, a wide cast of ordinary and absurd people, and an amused narrator who speaks directly to the reader. His humour, his sharp eye for hypocrisy and his belief in goodness of heart gave the novel a confident comic shape that later writers, from Dickens to Thackeray, would build on.