Book Description
Best remembered as the author of Joseph Andrews (1742), Tom Jones (1749) and Amelia (1751), Henry Fielding was one of the most important pioneering English novelists of the eighteenth century, and his works continue to occupy a central place in the literary canon. During the 1730s he was the most dominant playwright in London since John Dryden; and in his official capacity as a magistrate, he addressed serious social problems and invented the modern metropolitan police. This reference book makes essential information available to readers interested in Fielding, his life, and his works. The volume is organized in sections devoted to such topics as Fielding's residences; his family members and household; historical persons, including authors who influenced him; his works; themes and topics important to his writings; and characters in his plays and prose fiction. Each section contains numerous entries on particular items, and many entries provide brief bibliographical information. While the sectional organization of the volume invites the reader to explore broad areas of interest, a thorough index provides convenient alphabetical access to the entries. A brief introductory essay and chronology begin the volume, and the book concludes with an extensive bibliography. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (1)

English Lit
I had to read this book for a college fiction class. I thought it wouldnt get any worse then this. However to my surprise this book was quite enjoyable in a classical kind of way! My professor said that this is supposed to be one of the first novels ever written and I was surprised that it had all the basics of a great modern read. Love,Sex,and Betrayel.

If you have to read this book dont be discourgaged its not all that bad. (smile) ... Read more

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A lively, in-depth discussion of TOM JONES.Students are taken on an exciting journey of discovery through every scene or chapter.Also included are unique text notes, ideas for themes and term papers, notes on the author's life as well as a glossary. ... Read more

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In Joseph Andrews (1742), Fielding's first novel, footboyJoseph loses his place when he rejects Lady Booby's advances, commencinga comic odyssey of robbery, poverty, and sexual viciousness. Alsoincluded is Shamela (1741), a shorter work, which extends the parody ofSamuel Richardson's immensely successful Pamela (1740) begun in JosephAndrews. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

Joseph Andrews is a picaresque/humorous eighteenth century novel which will delight the reader
Henry Fielding (1707-1754) was a man of the world. Though Fielding became a jurist in the last years of his short life he knew the corrupt, sexy and violent England of the reign of George II. In "Joseph Andrews" and his later, longer novel "Tom Jones" we join a hero on a romp through merry olde England!
Joseph Andrews is the reputed brother of Pamela Andrews being employed as a footman in the home of Lady Booby the widow of Sir Booby (the names are hilarious in this novel-for instance there is "Peter Pounce"!)When Lady Booby dismisses him after her failed seduction of the innocent lad he is forced to leave her employ.
Joseph is befriended by the poor curate Abraham Adams who is going to London to sell a book of his sermons. Adams is a Sancho Panza figure who has six children and a wife back at home. He is involved in countless battles, misunderstandings and hilarious situations in inns and before judges! Adams is like an innocent Adam prior to the Fall of Man. He is a good old soul who seeks to help Joseph and the latter's illiterate love
Fanny Goodwill.
All comes out well in the end as Joseph and Fanny are wed and we learn the history of their infancy. We learn many surprises about them which I won't share with anyone who is reading this review prior to perusing the novel for the first time!
Fielding is adept at humor, sexual situations and violent Keystone Kops varieties of mock battles! He was a fan of Cervantes and Andrews resembles an English Don Quioxote. Fielding enjoyed being the omniscent narrator often interjecting his thoughts on everything from marriage, the British social structure, warfare, human nature and the joys of true love.
Fielding's novel is a comment on Samuel Richardson's "Pamela" epistlatory novel of 1740 in which the pious servant Pamela writes home to her parents about her abduction, rape and eventual marriage to a Lord B. Fielding thought the virtuous Pamela to be a bit sickening and so satirized that lady in his "Shamela" and Joseph Andrews.
Joseph is the supposed brother of Pamela who appears in the Fielding novel. What did Richardson think of this "stealing" by Fielding of his famous heroine?
The characters are typecast showing no growth or development as would be the case in later novels. Dickens was greatly influenced by Fielding
whose careful descriptions of characters was a lesson well learned bythe great Victorian writer.
Joseph Andrews will take the reader back to the days of English inns and ale houses, rural roads and great country estates. It says much to our age about human nature which never changes.
Henry Fielding is a great early English novelist and his Joseph Andrews will always remain as a classic of the novelist's difficult art

One of the funniest books I've ever read!
This fast-paced comic novel was written as a parody of another 18th century classic, the immensely popular Pamela. Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded,was a best selling novel by Fielding's comtemporary, Samuel Richardson. (Please see my other reviews for more about this). Although the language andsocial customs have changed in the 200 plus years since this book was written, there is enough universality to the comedy that modern readers won't mind missing a few of the jokes.

Although having read Pamela first will help you get some of the inside humor, Joseph Andrews can be read on its own as well. Fielding uses Richardson's more serious morality tale as a jumping-off point for a pretended sequel, in which Pamela has a brother who encounters many of the same situations as his more famous sister. While Pamela was pursued by an amorous and unscrupulous landowner, Joseph is chased by lecherous females who can't believe that he is serious about saving himself for marriage to his childhood sweetheart. The humor comes from the gender reversal, and from Fielding's no-holds-barred spoof of the manners (and lack thereof) of the fashionable upper classes. Joseph is a clear-headed, intelligent young man of the servant class, whose social superiors just can't stop being ridiculous at every opportunity.I won't go into plot details-they are mostly of the standard farce variety anyway. But the scenes and dialog are often so hilarious that it doesn't matter what the pretext is, you just have to suspend all critical judgement and laugh.

P.S. Shamela is included in this edition. It's a shorter spoof of Pamela, written as a bawdy series of letters in which the supposedly chaste and innocent heroine reveals her darker side. Not on a par with Joseph Andrews, but still pretty funny.

Joseph Andrews--Like Kerouac--Goes On The Road
When readers come to JOSEPH ANDREWS--at least outside of a class on the 18th century novel, they usually have heard that this novel by Henry Fielding is funny, sort of an early Keruoac's On The Road. And while it is funny--a closer analogy might be to Hope and Crosby's On the Road films--its less obvious humor lies in its sharp satire, an understanding of which requires a bit of understanding how to place this book in its proper historical and cultural milieu.

To begin with, Fielding wrote JOSEPH ANDREWS when novel writing was still very nearly a brand new genre. The only models he had were from classical antiquity and a few more recent innovators like Swift and Samuel Richardson. Fielding felt that his efforts were so new that he had to justify them, which he did in the often overlooked and unread "Preface" to the book. Reading this preface sheds some much needed light on the genesis of his novel. Fielding notes here that he wrote JOSEPH ANDREWS according to what he saw as the models first used by the classic ancient poetry writers. They wrote mostly poems and epic poems. What Fielding was writing was a genre unknown to them: prose fiction. Fielding thus tries to draw an analogy between what he was writing and what these ancients had written: "Now, a comic romance is a comic epic-poem in prose." Since Fielding clearly saw JOSEPH ANDREWS as a comic romance, it made sense to him that he should follow the strict unities of time and place that the ancients followed in their epic poems. But one often overlooked irony is that this stern self-reminder from his own preface he then abandoned wildly, often, and at the drop of a hat. Thus, for his contemporary audience who had more than a passing acquaintance with classical training, Fielding gets his JOSEPH ANDREWS off with a satirical bang.

The book's plot itself defies explanation. It involves lost heirs, children stolen at birth, secret birthmarks, beatings that somehow leave no bruises: and all these occur fairly early on. The events are so convoluted and over the top that it is difficult to read them or remember them in their listed sequence. Yet, Fielding had good reason to believe that these wildly unbelievable events were precisely what his audiences wanted, since both Swift and Pope were still living and their respective satires much read and appreciated. Fielding chose to write on the book's title page that JOSEPH ANDREWS was "written in imitation of the manner of Cervantes, author of Don Quixote." With that subtle hint, Fielding feels free to allow his hero to go off tilting at every object in his path but windmills. This tilting results in the kind of slapstick humor that most readers mean when they talk about how "funny" the book is. Yet, Fielding knew that humor could and should have a more serious aspect, which he saw as sober satire. For him, as for Swift, satire meant holding society up to a crooked mirror--sort of the kind that one sees at fun houses--and exposing by crooked exaggeration the misdeeds of that society. This concept of sober satire is hinted at in the person of Parson Adams, who also figures prominently right there on the title page with that little note about Cervantes. Parson Adams is Don Quixote reborn. He does ridiculous things for which the reader rightfully laughs at for that. Yet, Parson Adams has a more reflective side too. Though he is betrayed, he forgives. Though he is injured, he holds on to his innocence. And though he is hurt, he laughs. Compare his actions to the half dozen other parsons and what emerges is that these other parsons are licentuous, venal, and downright corrupt. Fielding was concerned with the same worry of every writer from Chaucer to himself: what can the ordinary man hope for when his supposed exemplars of virtue--the clergy--are unvirtuous? Well, in the satirical world of JOSEPH ANDREWS there was a little bit of an otherwise evil world that was evil free. When Fielding's readers laughed at the foibles of Andrews and Adams, their laughter was tempered by the realization that their funny universe was only a hairsbreath away from one was that tragic too.

Great Classic Humorous Novel
My sense of humor might be a bit off from the norm (my kids' opinion) so you may not find this mid-eighteenth century novel as funny as I do. I think it's just about the funniest book I've ever read. Not only is it funny but Fielding points a sharply satirical finger at just about everyone living in England at the time. One of the things that I love about the older books is their insight into history: though it's an obvious satire (much like the work of Cervantes) there's so much history here. Yet you see yourself and your neighbors here as well. We're still surrounded by people who are petty, pompous, flirtatious, morose - what have you - while we remain paragons of virtue. In a sense this is Joseph's problem: he's a good kid trying to make it in a crazy world (still a modern story). He's simple and kind and believes others around him to be the same. He's continually amazed when they prove otherwise. Really a good book.

Joseph Andrews and Shamela
Romping good fun and sharply satirical. Fielding has none of the puritanical prejudices of his contemporary and rival Samuel Richardson.Rather he gives a graphic, humourous and insightful glimpse ofeighteenth century ruralshannanigans. Both stories are to some extent aresponse to Richardson's goodie goodie novel Pamela or Virtue Rewarded,Shamela in fact so much so- mimicking then epistulatory narrative and burlesquing the characters and style of theoriginal novel- that you'llmiss most of the jokes unless you've read Richardson first. Jospeh Andrewsis far more substantial and rewarding containing the full range both ofFielding's humour and social concerns. Vividly presenting the self-servingcynicism ofEnglish society his particular speciality lies in puncturingpomposity by comically abrupt opposistions between what his characterspreach and practise. Detached, sarcastic and well-read Fielding somehowmanages to mixslapstick with Homer, blend eupheimism with innuendo andmangle anyone that he has a grudge against. A novel of the road- if youliked this, you'll love Tom Jones. ... Read more

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