Henry Fielding was born in 1707 into a family with aristocratic connections. His father, Edmund, had ancestors who were earls, and his mother, Sarah, was daughter of the judge Sir Henry Gould. Their son Henry attended the elite Eton College, but then found himself forced to earn a living in his early twenties when a disputed inheritance claim left him without support. At this point, the young Fielding turned to playwriting and political journalism. In all, he would write some 25 plays, many satirizing the political corruption of the times. So scathing was his ridicule of corrupt government ministers, particularly of the powerful prime minister Sir Robert Walpole, that Parliament passed the 1737 Licensing Act, by which all new plays had to be approved and licensed by the lord chamberlain before production. This exercise in government censorship effectively ended Fielding’s career as a dramatist, so he turned to political journalism, writing in the service of Whig opposition leaders Lord John Russell (fourth duke of Bedford) and Lord George Lyttleton (to whom Tom Jones is dedicated). After an abortive 1728 elopement with an heiress, Fielding courted and married Charlotte Cradock in 1734.
This is a free page. This page contains 201 words. This
article contains 5,091 words (approx. 17 pages at 300
words per page).
Read the rest of this Article with our The History of Tom Jones: A Foundling Access Pass.
