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“... Fielding was born in 1707 into a family in straitened circumstances but of aristocratic connections. A family myth, based on forged papers, claimed descent from the Hapsburgs. The combination of financial embarrassment and gentlemanly caste is emblematic of the whole atmosphere of his life, and is variously reflected in his writings ...”

“... all Trades from the highest to the lowest, from that of Prime Ministring to this of Authoring,’ Fielding announces with mock pomposity in Joseph Andrews. In a work published just days after the fall from office of Sir Robert Walpole – ‘prime minister’ in a sense that had no constitutional legitimacy at the time, and implied an alarming concentration ...”

“... came up with a mock epic in heroic couplets in the manner of Pope, and a novella in the style of Henry Fielding. After several volumes of poetry and a runaway success with her bawdy modern picaresque, Fear of Flying, she still likes the challenge of the Clifford assignment. Fanny, being the True History of the Adventures of Fanny Hackabout-Jones, is a ...”

“... 18th-century landscape painter, who, had he been precociously litigious, could have tried to sue Henry Fielding for using his name without permission. There are no less than four limited companies called Thomas Jones, with or without sons and various parenthetical geographical locations. While de Bernières is just going to have to get used to sharing ...”

“... all who are associated with this court.’ He was the 33rd chief magistrate, a role once held by Henry Fielding, who presided over the first detective force, the Bow Street Runners.The same thing has been happening everywhere. Five years ago, and a few miles away, what was once Old Street Magistrates’ Court was turned into the Courthouse Hotel. The ...”

“... There is Hilary the hard-bitten tabloid columnist. Roddy the heartless art-dealing seducer, Henry the free-market ideologue, Dorothy the profit-mad agriculturalist. As a dynasty, however, these men and women belong to another literary and temporal mode entirely – to the spoof Gothic fiction of Winshaw Towers, with its cartoon-like turrets and ...”

“... streets or travel on the highways. It was in the aftermath of the War of Austrian Succession that Henry Fielding, a Bow Street magistrate as well as a novelist and playwright, began forming the force that would come to be known by the unofficial title of the Bow Street Runners. Fielding the novelist was a tolerant chap ...”

“... their printed works, on occasion, for various reasons. No novelist has made such a job of it as Henry James. In July 1905 he began the task of revising his life’s work, in order to create a final statement, a complete collection of his works, called from its inception the New York Edition. James actually believed that this gigantic labour would be ...”

“... information derived from the novels, restricted to the work of seven novelists: Samuel Richardson, Henry Fielding, Sarah Fielding, Charlotte Lennox, Sarah Scott, Clara Reeve and Frances Burney. (There are occasional references to other writers, such as Jane Austen.) A segment on, for instance, ‘Daughters’ will ...”

“... ancient or modern, dated or novel? In A Maggot he has not followed the conventions deriving from Henry Fielding – and indeed 1736 is four years too early for a Fielding novel. The actor, Lacy, timorously admits, in the course of A Maggot, that he has been performing in ...”

“... ever asked to review, let us say fifty years ago, was a study of Fair Rosamond, the mistress of Henry II. The King kept her hidden in a maze at Woodstock but his wife, who had probably been told about Ariadne, tracked down her rival by following a thread or clew, and that was effectively the end of Rosamond, except that she turned up quite often in ...”

“... Nigeria and telling Nigerians how to behave: two burdens, perhaps, a double yoke. Like Aluko (or Henry Fielding), Miss Emecheta is happy to halt her pacey narrative and tell the reader bluntly what she thinks of her characters and life in general. This technique, the sermon in parenthesis, is acceptable in skilful story-tellers, like Miss ...”

“... culture in the mid-18th century, emphasising instead the brisker perspectives represented by Henry Fielding. Henry’s sister Sarah, whose novel The Adventures of David Simple is examined in detail here, demonstrates the power of the vision of sensibility which culminated in Richardson’s Clarissa. It was a ...”

“... the self-employed ‘thief-catcher’ – the most celebrated was Jonathan Wild, immortalised by Fielding. Such self-appointed sleuths cashed in on the lavish Parliamentary rewards newly offered for those bringing successful prosecutions. With a thief-catcher clearing up to £140 per case – far more than an artisan’s annual income – it could be nice ...”

“... sense. All these years, Tom Wolfe has been writing Comedy with a capital C, Comedy like that of Henry Fielding and Jane Austen and Joseph Addison, like that of Thackeray and Shaw and Mark Twain. Like these writers, Tom Wolfe might be described as a brooding humanistic presence. There is a decided moral edge to his humour. Wofe never tells us what to ...”