Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Biographical Outline
- Abbreviations and References
- Prologue
- 1 Youth, Plays, and Politics
- 2 Towards Fiction: The Champion and Shamela
- 3 Form and Falsity: Joseph Andrews
- 4 Vice and Vision: Jonathan Wild and A Journey from This World to the Next
- 5 War, Women, and Worldly Judgement: Tom Jones
- 6 Prison Gates: The Enquiry and Amelia
- 7 From Covent Garden to Lisbon
- Notes
- Select Bibliography
- Index
4 - Vice and Vision: Jonathan Wild and A Journey from This World to the Next
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Biographical Outline
- Abbreviations and References
- Prologue
- 1 Youth, Plays, and Politics
- 2 Towards Fiction: The Champion and Shamela
- 3 Form and Falsity: Joseph Andrews
- 4 Vice and Vision: Jonathan Wild and A Journey from This World to the Next
- 5 War, Women, and Worldly Judgement: Tom Jones
- 6 Prison Gates: The Enquiry and Amelia
- 7 From Covent Garden to Lisbon
- Notes
- Select Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Joseph Andrews was published in February 1742, and, although friends of Richardson, like George Cheyne, declared it ‘a wretched Performance’ which ‘will entertain none but Porters or Watermen’, praise far outweighed criticism.
That spring, however, Fielding could not rejoice. Three weeks after the novel appeared his 5-year-old daughter died in a raging flu epidemic. After a severe winter, his wife was also ill and he himself was beginning to suffer from gout. To augment his legal fees, he made brief forays back to play-writing in collaboration with David Garrick, and translated Plautus with Andrew Young. Neither scheme proved lucrative, but his proposal for a three volume Miscellanies gained an impressive list of subscribers. Published in April 1743, Volume I included uncollected essays and poems such as the love lyrics to ‘Celia’ (Charlotte), and the verse essays ‘Of True Greatness’, ‘Of Good-Nature’ and ‘On Liberty’. Volume II held A Journey from This World to the Next and two unpublished plays, while Volume III contained Jonathan Wild. (The form in which we usually read Jonathan Wild today, however, and the one quoted here, is the 1754 version, as revised by Fielding just before his death.)
Two of the essays in the Miscellanies I are of special interest. ‘On Conversation’ treats the typical Augustan theme of ‘Man as a Social Animal’, in which conversation, in the double sense of talk and acts, binds society together. As a guiding principle, Fielding chooses ‘good-breeding’, the practical expression of the rule ‘Do unto all Men as you would they should do unto you’ (M. 124). Through a series of illustrations he carefully steers the notion of breeding away from class towards the following conclusion:
That whoever, from the Goodness of his Disposition or Understanding, endeavours to his utmost to cultivate the Good-humour and Happiness of others, and to contribute to the Ease and Comfort of all his Acquaintance, however low in Rank Fortune may have placed him, or however clumsy he may be in Figure or Demeanour, hath, in the truest Sense of the Word, a Claim to Good Breeding. (M. 152)
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- Henry Fielding , pp. 43 - 53Publisher: Liverpool University PressPrint publication year: 1995