Tom Jones was an immediate success with readers. Periodicals and, therefore, published critics, were far fewer in number then than they are now, but most who wrote about the novel, for publication or in private letters, received it with some enthusiasm. One exception was Samuel Richardson, author of the recent best-seller Pamela, which Fielding had twice parodied. In a letter to the daughters of a friend, Richardson panned Tom Jones while admitting that he had not read it. Claiming that he had been warned by "judicious friends" not to do so, Richardson continued:

I had reason to think that the author intended . . . to whiten a vicious character and to make morality bend to his practices. What reason has he to make this Tom illegitimate? Why did he make him . . . the lowest of all fellows? Why did he draw his heroine so fond, so foolish, and so...