Though Fielding invented both a narrative technique and a genre - or, more accurately, he transplanted the picaresque as invented by Miguel de Cervantes in "Don Quixote" from Spain to England - his methods sometimes seem rather primitive today. Though "Tom Jones" is surprisingly modern in many ways, it seems quaint by contrast with books by authors who profited from Fielding's example, from Charles Dickens to Mark Twain to Saul Bellow. So at least my own second reading tells me, but it is "yes" with qualifications. Though it caused scandal and sensation, it soon was recognized as a masterpiece, and remains one to this day.Īll of which is well and good, but when a book is as old as this one, the question inevitably arises: How accessible is it to today's reader? Is the masterpiece also a period piece, or does it offer to the reader of 2003 as much pleasure and enrichment as it did to the reader of 1749?
Published in 1749 as "The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling," it was one of the first English works of prose that we now call novels. Henry Fielding's "Tom Jones" is a classic of British literature, not merely in its own right but for the incalculable influence it has had in England, the United States and wherever else English is written. An occasional series in which The Post's book critic reconsiders notable and/or neglected books from the past.
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