History of Tom Jones, A Foundling

Henry Fielding's masterpiece essentially invented the English novel. Tom Jones, a foundling raised by the generous Squire Allworthy, grows into a young man of appetites: for drink, for adventure, and most dangerously, for his neighbor's daughter, the virtuous Sophia Western. But in eighteenth-century England, a bastard's love is never simply his own affair. What follows is a rollicking picaresque journey through a world of thieves, soldiers, seducers, and hypocrites, where Tom's essential goodness is constantly tested by a society determined to judge him by his origins rather than his character. Fielding writes with a wit that cuts and a tenderness that surprises, wrapping sharp social criticism in the guise of bawdy entertainment. The sex is frank, the comedy is sharp, and the humanity runs deep. This is the novel that taught English literature how to tell a story about real people in a real world.