(born April 22, 1707, Sharpham Park, Somerset, Eng.—died Oct. 8, 1754, Lisbon, Port.) British novelist and playwright. Fielding attended Eton College but left early and lost his family's support. In his 25 plays, all written early, he was essentially a satirist of political corruption; because of his sharp commentary he was eventually effectively banished from the theatre, whereupon he took up the study of law.
In 1748 he was appointed a magistrate, in which role he established a new tradition of justice and suppression of crime in London. He probably wrote Shamela (1741), a burlesque of Samuel Richardson's Pamela that he never claimed. In the entertaining and original Joseph Andrews (1742) he also parodies Richardson's novel. Tom Jones (1749), his most popular work, is noted for its great comic gusto, vast gallery of characters, and contrasted scenes of high- and lowlife. The more sober Amelia (1751) anticipates the Victorian domestic novel. In these works he helped develop the English novel as a planned, realistic narrative genre surveying contemporary society.
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