The Complete Works of Henry Fielding

Collected here is The Complete Works of Henry Fielding (1707-1754), the Augustan novelist, dramatist, and magistrate whose stage satires were sharp enough to provoke the Theatrical Licensing Act of 1737. Standard collected editions, notably the sixteen-volume set edited by W. E. Henley in 1903, gather the novels Joseph Andrews, Jonathan Wild, Tom Jones, and Amelia alongside the plays, the journalism, and the late Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon. Reading Fielding across genres shows how a silenced playwright rebuilt himself into a founder of the English novel, while his day job as a Bow Street magistrate led him to organize the Bow Street Runners, London’s first professional police force. It remains the handiest single route into his whole range. Free PDF download available on BDeBooks.