Henry Fielding

Henry Fielding, dramatist, novelist, and judge, was born near Glastonbury, Somersetshire, April 22, 1707, and died at Lisbon, October 8, 1754. Though seldom spoken of as an essayist, Fielding scattered through his novels a large number of detached or detachable discussions which are essentially essays, of which the preface to “Joseph Andrews,” on the “Comic Epic in Prose,” is a favorable specimen. The novel which it introduces was begun as a parody on Richardson’s “Pamela,” and the preface gives Fielding’s conception of this form of fiction.

Preface to Joseph Andrews