HISTORY OF TOM JONES [2 VOLUMES] BY: HENRY FIELDING

FEATURES: HISTORY OF TOM JONES [2 VOLUMES]  BY: HENRY FIELDING

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A) CONDITION BOOK: VERY GOOD - HARD BOUND

B) CONDITION DUST JACKET: NOT ISSUED

C) CT. BRAINARD COMPANY 

D) NOTE: NO DATE OF PUBLICATION INDICATED. CIRCA EARLY 20th CENTURY.
APPROXIMATELY 1400 PAGES.  2 VOLUMES FROM A SET [12 VOLUMES] FROM THE COMPLETE WORKS OF HENRY FIELDING. DARKENING TO SPINE. EMBOSSED OWNERSHIP STAMP OF TIMOTHY FINLEY, RENOWNED CANADIAN PLAYWRIGHT ACTOR AND NOVELIST.

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The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, often known simply as Tom Jones, is a comic novel by English playwright and novelist Henry Fielding. It is a Bildungsroman and a picaresque novel. It was first published on 28 February 1749 in London and is among the earliest English works to be classified as a novel.^[1] It is the earliest novel mentioned by W. Somerset Maugham in his 1948 book Great Novelists and Their Novels among the ten best novels of the world.^[2]

The novel is highly organised despite its length. Samuel Taylor Coleridge argued that it has one of the "three most perfect plots ever planned", alongside Oedipus Tyrannus and The Alchemist.^[3] It became a best seller with four editions published in its first year alone.^[4] It is generally regarded as Fielding's greatest book and as an influential English novel.^[5]

The kindly and wealthy Squire Allworthy and his sister Bridget are introduced in their wealthy estate in Somerset. Allworthy returns from London after an extended business trip and finds an abandoned baby sleeping in his bed. He summons his housekeeper, Mrs Deborah Wilkins, to take care of the child. After searching the nearby village Mrs Wilkins is told about a young woman called Jenny Jones, a servant of a schoolmaster and his wife, as the most likely person to have committed the deed. Jenny is brought before the Allworthys and admits being the one who put the baby in the bed, but she refuses to reveal the father's identity. Mr Allworthy mercifully removes Jenny to a place where her reputation will be unknown and tells his sister to raise the boy, whom he names Thomas, in his household.

Two brothers, Dr Blifil and Captain Blifil, regularly visit the Allworthy estate. The doctor introduces the captain to Bridget in the hope of marrying into Allworthy's wealth. The couple soon marries. After the marriage, Captain Blifil begins to show a coldness to his brother, who eventually feels obliged to leave the house for London. He does, and, soon after, he dies "of a broken heart". Captain Blifil and his wife start to grow cool towards one another, and the former is found dead from apoplexy one evening after taking his customary evening stroll before dinner. By then, he has fathered a boy who grows up with the bastard Tom. Captain Blifil's son, known as Master Blifil, is a miserable and jealous boy who conspires against Tom.

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