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Product Description
Product Description
Fielding's comic masterpiece of 1749 was immediately attacked as `A motley history of bastardism, fornication, and adultery'. Indeed, his populous novel overflows with a marvellous assortment of prudes, whores, libertines, bumpkins, misanthropes, hypocrites, scoundrels, virgins, and all too fallible humanitarians. At the centre of one of the most ingenious plots in English fiction stands a hero whose actions were, in 1749, as shocking as they are funny today. Expelled from Mr Allworthy's country estate for his wild temper and sexual conquests, the good-hearted foundling Tom Jones loses his money, joins the army, and pursues his beloved across Britain to London, where he becomes a kept lover and confronts the possibility of incest. Tom Jones is rightly regarded as Fielding's greatest work, and one of the first and most influential of English novels. This carefully modernized edition is based on Fielding's emended fourth edition text and offers the most thorough notes, maps, and bibliography. The introduction uses the latest scholarship to examine how Tom Jones exemplifies the role of the novel in the emerging eighteenth-century public sphere.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
In Tom Jones, Fielding hangs a huge and rambling tale on the life and travels of a foundling. Often cited alongside Richardson's Pamela: Or Virtue Rewarded (Oxford World's Classics) as the first great novels of English literature (however innacurate that label might be), this works very differently stylistically.
Fielding breaks the cardinal rule of novel-writing ("show, don't tell") and pulls it off magisterially. Tom is a lad with a good heart but that doesn't stop him falling into all manner of bawdy situations with a combination of gusto and innocence. As a precursor to Dickens, Fielding manages to cram in a whole social panorama, and controls his story precisely.
A great C18th classic that's also a very easy, immensely good-natured, and very funny read.
Fielding breaks the cardinal rule of novel-writing ("show, don't tell") and pulls it off magisterially. Tom is a lad with a good heart but that doesn't stop him falling into all manner of bawdy situations with a combination of gusto and innocence. As a precursor to Dickens, Fielding manages to cram in a whole social panorama, and controls his story precisely.
A great C18th classic that's also a very easy, immensely good-natured, and very funny read.
Format:Paperback
I've seen a lot of people telling writers to build a platform. I disagree. What they should be building is a personality.
Writing experts drone on about an author's voice. They're not wrong. But your voice is just a means to express your personality.
Misled by writers of genius like T.S. Eliot and Flaubert, some authorities stress revision. They force you to focus on smoothness of style. They want you to rewrite everything until your personality completely disappears.
That's okay if you have been writing 1,000 words a day every day for years and want to hone your technique. But first you have to discover what is in you. You have to learn how to be yourself, to cast off artifice and be completely natural.
That is very hard.
If you're not sure what a personality looks like when it's poured into a novel, you could read Tom Jones. Even if it doesn't make you a better writer, it will make you a better person.
Moral education should always be like this: ribald, riotous and fun. It's huge but it's masterly, it hits all the right spots, it teases, stimulates and satisfies. After you've reached the climax you'll want it all over again.
In case you hadn't guessed, I love it. Henry Fielding wasn't handsome but he had a big personality. This book is his platform and when you've finished reading it, it makes a good yoga brick.
Writing experts drone on about an author's voice. They're not wrong. But your voice is just a means to express your personality.
Misled by writers of genius like T.S. Eliot and Flaubert, some authorities stress revision. They force you to focus on smoothness of style. They want you to rewrite everything until your personality completely disappears.
That's okay if you have been writing 1,000 words a day every day for years and want to hone your technique. But first you have to discover what is in you. You have to learn how to be yourself, to cast off artifice and be completely natural.
That is very hard.
If you're not sure what a personality looks like when it's poured into a novel, you could read Tom Jones. Even if it doesn't make you a better writer, it will make you a better person.
Moral education should always be like this: ribald, riotous and fun. It's huge but it's masterly, it hits all the right spots, it teases, stimulates and satisfies. After you've reached the climax you'll want it all over again.
In case you hadn't guessed, I love it. Henry Fielding wasn't handsome but he had a big personality. This book is his platform and when you've finished reading it, it makes a good yoga brick.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
3 reviews
8 of 11 people found the following review helpful
Incredibly fun read
20 Dec 2010
Format:Paperback
There are a great deal of very big books that aren't worth the effort. Actually there are a great deal of short books that aren't worth the effort. This book is not only huge, it's also a very slow read. The first few hundred pages alone are a bit of a slog as Fielding feels the need to explain every single attitude and scandal that went into the creation of Tom Jones - adopted son of the rather obviously named Allworthy.
HOwever, the slowness becomes a virtue as you want to live in Fielding's world after a time. Tom Jones is in love with Sophia, the neighboring squire's daughter and since he's the bastard son of a vanished serving girl he doesn't have a chance. So in true double standard, he charms and seduces women throughout the countryside, all the while trying to get with Sophia who is fleeing from an arranged marriage with Jones' adopted cousin.
There is a lot to recommend about this book but one of the most interesting ones is the relative standards of morality. Fielding takes a very modern view of morality in that the priests and the philosophers and the openly virtuous characters are hypocrites and creeps, whereas the randy and seducing Tom Jones is held up as the moral paradigm due to his sweet nature and ability to go out of his way for a friend or comrade. This would prove to be a controversial standard in Fielding's time and one wonders what the Victorians would have made of it, but in this era when we are almost certain that the examplars of morality (be they preachers or radical vegetarians) are actually truly horrible people (Falwell's sermons, Morrissey's animal-rights motivated racism, Catholic priest molesters,etc.) this book is almost too appropriate in speaking to our notions of decency and morality. Even though this book has an Allworthy who is truly an epitome of morality, most of the other moral characters are jerks. The anglican priest is a toady and the philsopher is an atheist moralist with just as much of a hypocritical view of the world (until he's revealed to be sleeping with a minor character and then he gets over himself and stops being such a creep).
All in all, this is a fine slow book that is truly worth the effort and the time. Call it the English equivalent of Don Quixote or the anti-The Da Vinci Code (which is a short book that isn't worth the hour or two it takes to read)
HOwever, the slowness becomes a virtue as you want to live in Fielding's world after a time. Tom Jones is in love with Sophia, the neighboring squire's daughter and since he's the bastard son of a vanished serving girl he doesn't have a chance. So in true double standard, he charms and seduces women throughout the countryside, all the while trying to get with Sophia who is fleeing from an arranged marriage with Jones' adopted cousin.
There is a lot to recommend about this book but one of the most interesting ones is the relative standards of morality. Fielding takes a very modern view of morality in that the priests and the philosophers and the openly virtuous characters are hypocrites and creeps, whereas the randy and seducing Tom Jones is held up as the moral paradigm due to his sweet nature and ability to go out of his way for a friend or comrade. This would prove to be a controversial standard in Fielding's time and one wonders what the Victorians would have made of it, but in this era when we are almost certain that the examplars of morality (be they preachers or radical vegetarians) are actually truly horrible people (Falwell's sermons, Morrissey's animal-rights motivated racism, Catholic priest molesters,etc.) this book is almost too appropriate in speaking to our notions of decency and morality. Even though this book has an Allworthy who is truly an epitome of morality, most of the other moral characters are jerks. The anglican priest is a toady and the philsopher is an atheist moralist with just as much of a hypocritical view of the world (until he's revealed to be sleeping with a minor character and then he gets over himself and stops being such a creep).
All in all, this is a fine slow book that is truly worth the effort and the time. Call it the English equivalent of Don Quixote or the anti-The Da Vinci Code (which is a short book that isn't worth the hour or two it takes to read)
To be read right through at once,not in installments
17 April 2012
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
I first read "Tom Jones" in installments while at the beach. This was completely the wrong way to read it because the overall connections were lost. If one wants to get the complete sense and the connections between all the characters,one must read it straight through. It is an excellent book, Fielding is a very good writer. The scenes in the film made of the book where Tom eats gluttonously and his lips are covered in grease do NOT occur in the book.(Ealing studio's license no doubt,I do not remember the name of the director of the film but I am sure he was English)
Peter R Wigley
Peter R Wigley
4 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Makes a good yoga brick
2 Sep 2011
Format:Paperback
I've seen a lot of people telling writers to build a platform. I disagree. What they should be building is a personality.
Writing experts drone on about an author's voice. They're not wrong. But your voice is just a means to express your personality.
Misled by writers of genius like T.S. Eliot and Flaubert, some authorities stress revision. They force you to focus on smoothness of style. They want you to rewrite everything until your personality completely disappears.
That's okay if you have been writing 1,000 words a day every day for years and want to hone your technique. But first you have to discover what is in you. You have to learn how to be yourself, to cast off artifice and be completely natural.
That is very hard.
If you're not sure what a personality looks like when it's poured into a novel, you could read Tom Jones. Even if it doesn't make you a better writer, it will make you a better person.
Moral education should always be like this: ribald, riotous and fun. It's huge but it's masterly, it hits all the right spots, it teases, stimulates and satisfies. After you've reached the climax you'll want it all over again.
In case you hadn't guessed, I love it. Henry Fielding wasn't handsome but he had a big personality. This book is his platform and when you've finished reading it, it makes a good yoga brick.
Writing experts drone on about an author's voice. They're not wrong. But your voice is just a means to express your personality.
Misled by writers of genius like T.S. Eliot and Flaubert, some authorities stress revision. They force you to focus on smoothness of style. They want you to rewrite everything until your personality completely disappears.
That's okay if you have been writing 1,000 words a day every day for years and want to hone your technique. But first you have to discover what is in you. You have to learn how to be yourself, to cast off artifice and be completely natural.
That is very hard.
If you're not sure what a personality looks like when it's poured into a novel, you could read Tom Jones. Even if it doesn't make you a better writer, it will make you a better person.
Moral education should always be like this: ribald, riotous and fun. It's huge but it's masterly, it hits all the right spots, it teases, stimulates and satisfies. After you've reached the climax you'll want it all over again.
In case you hadn't guessed, I love it. Henry Fielding wasn't handsome but he had a big personality. This book is his platform and when you've finished reading it, it makes a good yoga brick.
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