Amelia I-II. [antikvár]

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE Henry Fielding (1707-54); born at Sharpham Park, Somerset, seat of his maternal grandfather, Sir Henry Gould, judge of the King's Bench; his own father served under Marlborough, later becoming a general. 1719-c. 1724, at Eton, with the elder Pitt, the elder Fox, Charles Hanbury (Williams), Thomas Arne and George Lyttelton, later a leading statesman, and Fielding's friend. 1728-9, studied literature at Leyden. 1729-37, wrote plays in London; the main surviving results are some songs (including ' The dusky night rides down the sky"), the burlesque Tom Thumb, two adaptations of Moliere {The Mock Doctor] The Miser), and two political satires [Pasquín] The Historical Register for 1736). Walpole retaliated with the Licensing Act (1737). 1734, married Charlotte Cradock of Salisbury, commemorated in Sophia and Amelia. 1737, entered Middle Temple, and tried journalism in The Champion (1739-41), which reveals the wide reading and generous attitudes later displayed in the novels. Ridiculed Richardson's Pamela (1740) with a brilliant travesty, Shamela (1741), and with Joseph Andrews (1742). 1743, Miscellanies (3 vols., including A Journey from This World to the Next and Jonathan Wild). Severely harassed by poverty and family troubles; his wife died 1744. Anti-Stuart-and-Popery propaganda in The True Patriot (1745-6) and The Jacobite's Journal (1747-8). 1748, appointed Justice of the Peace for Westminster, later for Middlesex also ; as Bow Street magistrate struggled with poverty, crime and corruption. 1749, Tom Jones. Despite failing health worked indefatigably, with his blind half-brother Sir John Fielding, to clean up legal malpractices and street violence. 1751, Amelia and An Enquiry into the Causes of the Late Increase of Robbers. 1752, The Covent-Garden Journal. 1753, A Proposal for Making an Effectvial Provision for the Poor. 1754, fatally ill from his exertions and disease; sailed for Portugal, but died soon after arrival. 1755. Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon published.