The History of Tom Jones
First published 1749 · English · 499 pages
- Novels
- Science and nature
Tom Jones is a comic novel about a foundling raised in the household of a kind country gentleman in Somerset. Tom is warm-hearted, impulsive and often in trouble, and he loves his neighbour Sophia Western, whose family has other plans for her. Cast out from home, Tom travels toward London, and the road brings him a crowd of innkeepers, soldiers, rogues and fine ladies.
Fielding's narrator chats with the reader between episodes, discussing writing and human nature. The book is a landmark of English fiction, admired for its tight plot, its generous humour and its portrait of eighteenth-century life.
Quotes
Men who pay for what they eat will insist on gratifying their palates
The same animal which hath the honour to have some part of his flesh eaten at the table of a duke, may perhaps be degraded in another part, and some of his limbs gibbeted, as it were, in the vilest stall in town.
...the excellence of the mental entertainment consists less in the subject than in the author's skill in well dressing it up.
Reader, I think proper, before we proceed any farther together, to acquaint thee that I intend to digress, through this whole history, as often as I see occasion, of which I am myself a better judge than any pitiful critic..."