History of Tom Jones, a Foundling

Fielding’s sprawling comic masterpiece follows the good-hearted foundling Tom Jones from a country estate to the roads and inns of England and finally to London, as his appetites and misadventures keep him from his beloved Sophia. Bawdy, generous, and brilliantly plotted, its intrusive, joking narrator practically invents the modern novel’s playful self-awareness. It remains one of the funniest and most humane novels in the language.