(Abandoned) I had to put this one down because it bored the living daylight out of me. Nothing about it made me want to keep turning pages.

Boring. Just ready anything by Dickens instead.

I don’t know what people love about it. It is said to be funny but it is not. I have dreaded every moment of reading it. It also has a movie adaptation and I thought that watching it will be a good idea. Silly me! I did not know what was waiting for me (tears of regret)! The movie was horrible, senseless and so bad that I went back to reading the 700 pages that were left. Just imagine how bad the plot would be!
I literally cried after finishing it not because I finally finished it but because now I don’t have to keep it on my shelves anymore! They were the happiest tears.

Whew, that was a long one. The History of Tom Jones, A Foundling by Henry Fielding was the first book that I picked up this year and it took me a whole month to get through it, mostly through it's sheer size and the fact that 18th century language just takes longer to read. Tom Jones is considered one of the first true English novels and it;s wild popularity has stood the test of time. Fielding has an undeniable wit and such a perfect, dry sense of humor that I found myself smiling almost on every page.

While I had quite a few issues with the double standard Fielding mocked but still upheld regarding sexuality for men and women and the sexist ideals to which Sophia Western was held, I still found the novel enjoyable overall, mostly due to Fielding's humor. It's not exactly subtle. He spends several chapters outright railing against literary critics and names his characters things like Allworthy and Thwackum.

Overall, I was pleased to have read such an important work of British literature and to have enjoyed it as much as I did. I probably won't be rereading, but I'm certainly glad to have tackled it. Confession: Halfway through I turned to the audiobook for some help. One month with the same book is rather a long time and I was ready to be done.

Se fosse stato lungo la metà sarebbe stato diverrtente da leggere come reperto archeologico della verbosa anzichenò letteratura inglese del Settecento. Così è impossibile, ho saltato di tutto e di più e non ho neanche avuto voglia di leggere per intero il capitolo finale, tanto per capire l'andazzo di questa orribile esperienza.

For a novel written in 1749, Tom Jones was ahead of its time and quite risque. There was much of this novel I enjoyed. Learning a bit of how people lived in 1749, the references to George Fredrich Handel (who was Fielding's contemporary), and the many laugh out loud one liners.
Some of the situations that Tom Jones gets himself into were entertaining, and I thought the book moved pretty quickly until around the last quarter. This could have also just been from me getting impatient to finish, but Fielding sometimes likes to lecture at you through his characters which slows things down. But by the last 20 pages, a lot of things came together and the plot picked up again.
There were some questionable ideas discussed (mostly about women) that a more modern audience would be appalled by. But considering this was written in 1749, it makes a sense. Instead of getting offended, I found it an interesting study of that time and how people thought. Despite these more chauvinistic views, Fielding seems to actually respect many of the women characters, especially Sophia his main leading lady (based on his own wife).
This is not a novel for everybody, the older English (not archaic, but still old enough to slow you down a bit) and the 800 pages is enough to scare some people. But if you are a lover of classic literature, enjoy reading books written in the past, and want to read a book that is considered one of the best British books ever written then this is for you! Find out why when Tom Jones was published, people were shocked by its content and convinced that some earthquakes that ocurred were because of Tom Jones.

The word 'foundling' in the title of Henry Fielding's novel, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, is such an interesting concept when you think about it.
Aren't all main characters foundlings in some way or other—I mean, they may not appear one evening out of nowhere wrapped in a blanket and laid on somebody's bed as baby Tom did, but they are more or less brought into being without a back story so that the novel they are in can then provide one, since, unlike Tom, they are often already full-grown when they are born. But full-grown or not, the author still has to name them, offhandedly maybe, as in characters called Tom or Joe or Harry, or more purposefully as in the case of, say, Ernest Worthing, Lady Dedlock or Frodo Baggins.
Then again there are some characters who seem both offhandedly and purposely named such as Major Major in Catch 22.
Henry Fielding has some characters in that vein: the very virtuous Squire Allworthy, the very boring and logical Mr Square, the Reverend Thwackum, a tutor who likes to use the cane at every opportunity, Black George, who does some fairly despicable things.
I enjoy when authors like Heller and Fielding announce clearly via their characters' names that they are invented, yet still draw us in to the fiction they are creating by making believe it is fact. Fielding tells us that the Squire's sister, Miss Bridget (and note her very real-life name), is the actual person depicted in one of William Hogarth's real-life prints: I would attempt to draw her picture, but that is done already by a more able master, Mr. Hogarth himself, to whom she sat many years ago, and has been lately exhibited by that gentleman in his print of a winters morning, of which she was no improper emblem, and may be seen walking (for walk she doth in the print) to Covent-Garden church, with the starved foot-boy behind, carrying her prayer book.



So on the one hand, Fielding is saying this is all made up, and on the other, it's all real. He maintains that waltz between the real and the fictive all the way through the book. Take the chapter headings, for instance (all 208 of them spread across 18 'books' in this 6 volume novel), each one is like a tantalizing game the author plays with the reader.
Chapter vii —Containing such grave matter, that the reader cannot laugh once through the whole chapter, unless peradventure he should laugh at the author.
Or this one: —Containing what the reader may, perhaps, expect to find in it.
Or this —In which the author himself makes his appearance on the stage.
Or these two succeeding ones:
—A little chapter, in which is contained a little incident.
—A very long chapter, containing a very great incident.
Ok, just one more: —A most dreadful chapter indeed; and which few readers ought to venture upon in an evening, especially when alone.

That gives you a flavor of how funny and outright mischievous a writer Fielding is. The prologue, however, is awfully serious. He talks about how he wants to offer an example of true virtue, but the novel he then goes on to create seems to be aimed instead at examining and exposing all the hypocrisies in the society of his day: England in the 1730s and 40s.
He also seems intent on examining the very notion of what a novel should be. Each of the eighteen 'books' has a first chapter unrelated to the story. These 'essays' have titles such as:
—Of the SERIOUS in writing, and for what purpose it is introduced.
—Of those who lawfully may, and of those who may not, write such histories as this.
—Containing instructions very necessary to be perused by modern critics.
—An essay to prove that an author will write the better for having some knowledge of the subject on which he writes.
Inevitably, some of these essay titles are less serious sounding:
—Containing a portion of introductory writing.
—Containing five pages of paper.
—Containing little or nothing.

In one of these early essays, Fielding says My reader then is not to be surprized, if, in the course of this work, he shall find some chapters very short, and others altogether as long; some that contain only the time of a single day, and others that comprise years; in a word, if my history sometimes seems to stand still, and sometimes to fly. For all which I shall not look on myself as accountable to any court of critical jurisdiction whatever: for as I am, in reality, the founder of a new province of writing, so I am at liberty to make what laws I please therein. And these laws, my readers, whom I consider as my subjects, are bound to believe in and to obey; with which that they may readily and cheerfully comply, I do hereby assure them that I shall principally regard their ease and advantage...

I enjoyed all the introductory essays, and I was happy to find lots of thoughts on writing in other chapters as well. It seemed that Fielding couldn't help but constantly comment on the process of writing his story almost as if this were really the most important aspect for him. And I, in turn, began to be more interested in his opinions on writing and on devices in fiction than on the story they were embedded in. I believe Fielding intended that: since every book ought to be read with the same spirit and in the same manner as it is writ.

And when Fielding talks about looking out for the 'ease and advantage' of his readers (as in the long quote above), he follows through on the promise. He tells us, for example, that he's going to skip such and such a scene because we might find it boring, or that he has shortened some other passage so that we don't fall asleep, or he has realised that to relate the whole conversation of the ensuing scene is not within my power, unless I had forty pens, and could, at once, write with them all together, as the company now spoke. The reader must, therefore, content himself with the most remarkable incidents....
Notice how he implies here that, yes, this all happened and he was there, writing down what he could. It's all part of that wonderful waltz he does between the real and the fictional.

…………………………………………
This is a very old book and a very long book (in spite of Fielding's kindly editing), and you might wonder why I chose to read it instead of some contemporary novel which our current publishing world is pushing us to read. Well, Tom Jones fits into the three-volume novel project I started pursuing a few months ago when I read George Gissing's three-volume novel, [b:New Grub Street|782519|New Grub Street|George Gissing|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1414700331l/782519._SY75_.jpg|768534], about the publishing world of its day—referred to by writers and publishers as Grub Street. Gissing's book lead me to read Tobias Smollett's three-volume [b:Humphry Clinker|415836|The Expedition of Humphry Clinker|Tobias Smollett|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1344373373l/415836._SY75_.jpg|502618] from 1770, also featuring Grub Street. And Smollett lead me back a couple of decades to this three-part novel of Fielding's in which I was pleased to find a further mention of Grub Street. It occurs in one of the introductory essays, one entitled Invocation in which he calls on the genii of Grub Street and the goddess of memory to keep his name alive so that when the little parlour in which I sit at this instant shall be reduced to a worse furnished box, I shall be read with honour by those who never knew nor saw me, and whom I shall neither know nor see.
I think I read him with 'honour'.
…………………………………………… …
I must have unknowingly invoked some genii myself because while I was making my way through Fielding's tome, which is not easy to carry around in my bag, read in the bath, or even in bed, I fished a small pocket-sized [b:Unidentified|55365398|Unidentified man at left of photo|Jeff Bursey|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1600396758l/55365398._SX50_.jpg|86345281] book out of my book pile for those very times. It turned out to be the perfect complementary reading: the author is focusing on the process of writing just as Fielding is, and just as humourously. And the [b:Kate Briggs|61889841|The Long Form|Kate Briggs|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1660058982l/61889841._SY75_.jpg|97570739] book I've got lined up to read when I finish Unidentified happens to be partly about Fielding too.
How grateful I am that the 'little parlour' in which I sit writing this review is well stocked with books for every occasion.

I am done with The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling. Part of me never thought I’d say that, though I think it took me longer to read The Magic Mountain. I probably could’ve finished it in less time than I did had I not read along with it some nonfiction, some poetry, and some Shakespeare. It’s such an immersive novel though, that even while reading those others works, it felt like I was reading them from within the world Fielding had created.

I’m a little disappointed in myself for not reading it sooner. I wish I had read it before I got into Victorian literature. Then when I read Vanity Fair or The Pickwick Papers, I could say, “Yes, Fielding’s work is here.” Unfortunately, I read Fielding and am reminded of Thackeray and Dickens, as well as a large number of other novelists he’s influenced, which is nearly all of them in the last two hundred years.

I’d recommend anyone who is beginning to read Victorian literature to read Tom Jones beforehand (and it is not a Victorian novel, in case you don’t understand your literary periods), so you can understand everything from the literary style to the literary theory of the books you’re about to read. Fielding was writing at a time when the art form known as the novel was in its infancy. In fact, some people might say, though it’d be kind of weird, the parents of the English novel are Samuel Richardson and Henry Fielding. Fielding, in this metaphor, would be the mother of the English novel, since Richardson’s Pamela impregnated Fielding with his idea for the parody novel Shamela, but it’s a flawed metaphor, since what really brings Fielding into importance is the novel after that, Joseph Andrews—a novel Fielding modeled after Don Quixote and was called by its author a “comic epic-poem in prose.” The fruition of this new style was his masterpiece, The History of Tom Jones.

It is often called a “rollicking, fun romance” by online reviews I’ve read. (I feel like I almost never hear the word rollicking outside of online reviews for novels of this type, saving the occasional review of folk-pop album. It should be used in more common conversation.) It’s not an inaccurate description, and the same could be applied to Don Quixote or, so I’ve heard, Ulysses, but it does kind of leave a hollow sound when faced with the actual importance of what the work has done. If the reader doesn’t skip the introductory chapters of each book, which Fielding says he’s fine with you doing, then he’ll see a growing literary theory that one can trace from these early years of the art form all the way to present day. He deals with, mostly, what it means to be an author and what responsibility that title confers, but he also deals with issues of criticism, as well as moral topics; and all of these subjects are played out in both the style and content of the novel.

All of this deserves far more complex treatment than I’m willing to go into in a Goodreads review—in fact, I lament the idea of “reviewing” a novel like Tom Jones in the first place. What I really recommend to anyone who really wants to understand the English novel is to just read Tom Jones. (One should also be recommended to read Richardson’s Clarissa and Sterne’s Tristram Shandy, but since I’ve only read the latter, I’ll refrain from making that recommendation.) But first, if you haven’t already read them, read Don Quixote and Hamlet (and everything else by Shakespeare). Then, read The Pickwick Papers and Vanity Fair. Then, read every novel written after that.

Oh, and I didn’t even touch on Fielding’s influence on Jane Austen! Well, with a sigh of defeat, I’ll stop typing, since I’m afraid no one would’ve read this far anyway.