Tom Jones: Henry Fielding

"Tom Jones" is a great celebration of life, the first novel of its kind and still unrivalled as a classic of comic inventiveness and sheer exuberance. First published in 1749, Henry Fielding's tale of the foundling boy adopted by a rich and kindly benefactor only to be cast out on the verge of manhood is an epic saga that draws closely on the author's own rash and rackety life to pit 'goodness and innocence' against the greed and hypocrisy prevalent at all levels of society in his time. Described by Edward Gibbon as "that exquisite picture of human manners", Tom Jones is an enduring cause for optimism that our species is, after all, capable of redemption.