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HENRY FIELDING: THE AUTHOR AND HIS TIMES
The outspoken eighteenth-century man of letters, Samuel
Johnson, wrote to a woman who had read the novel Tom Jones:
I am shocked to hear you quote from so vicious a book. I am
sorry to hear you have read it: a confession which no modest
lady should ever make. I scarcely know a more corrupt work.
That's an unusual judgment about a landmark book in the
history of world literature, but it's a sample of the kind of
passionate response--both favorable and unfavorable--Tom Jones
has inspired since it was published. Its author, Henry
Fielding, was born on April 22, 1707, in Somerset, in southwest
England, the area where his hero is born and raised. Unlike
Tom, Fielding had...
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