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Henry Fielding (22 April 1707 – 8 October 1754) was an English novelist and dramatist known for his rich earthy humour and satirical prowess, and as the author of the novel ''Tom Jones''. Aside from his literary achievements, he has a significant place in the history of law enforcement, having founded (with his half-brother John) what some have called London's first police force, the Bow Street Runners, using his authority as a magistrate. His younger sister, Sarah, also became a successful writer.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Henry Fielding (1707–1754) )〕 ==Dramatist and novelist== Fielding was born at Sharpham, Somerset, and educated at Eton College, where he established a lifelong friendship with William Pitt the Elder. After a romantic episode with a young woman that ended in his getting into trouble with the law, he went to London, where his literary career began.〔 In 1728, he travelled to Leiden to study classics and law at the university.〔 However, lack of money obliged him to return to London and he began writing for the theatre. Some of his work was savagely critical of the government of Prime Minister Sir Robert Walpole. The Theatrical Licensing Act of 1737 is alleged to be a direct response to his activities.〔〔 The particular play that triggered the Licensing Act was the unproduced, anonymously authored, ''The Golden Rump'', but Fielding's dramatic satires had set the tone. Once the act was passed, political satire on the stage became virtually impossible, and playwrights whose works were staged were viewed as suspect. Fielding therefore retired from the theatre and resumed his career in law in order to support his wife Charlotte Craddock and two children, by becoming a barrister.〔 Fielding's lack of financial acumen meant he and his family often endured periods of poverty, but he was helped by Ralph Allen, a wealthy benefactor, on whom Squire Allworthy in ''Tom Jones'' was later based. Allen went on to provide for the education and support of Fielding's children after the writer's death. Fielding never stopped writing political satire and satires of current arts and letters. ''The Tragedy of Tragedies'' (for which Hogarth designed the frontispiece) was, for example, quite successful as a printed play. He also contributed a number of works to journals of the day. He wrote for Tory periodicals, usually under the name "Captain Hercules Vinegar". Fielding continued to air his liberal and anti-Jacobite views in satirical articles and newspapers in the late 1730s and early 1740s. Almost by accident he took to writing novels in 1741, angered by Samuel Richardson's success with ''Pamela''. His first big success was an anonymous parody of that: ''Shamela''. This satire that follows the model of the famous Tory satirists of the previous generation, Jonathan Swift and John Gay, in particular. Fielding followed this with ''Joseph Andrews'' (1742), an original work supposedly dealing with Pamela's brother, Joseph.〔 Although begun as a parody, it developed into an accomplished novel in its own right and is considered to mark Fielding's debut as a serious novelist. In 1743, he published a novel in the ''Miscellanies'' volume III (which was the first volume of the Miscellanies): ''The History of the Life of the Late Mr Jonathan Wild the Great'', which is sometimes counted as his first, as he almost certainly began it before he wrote ''Shamela'' and ''Joseph Andrews''. It is a satire of Walpole that draws a parallel between him and Jonathan Wild, the infamous gang leader and highwayman. He implicitly compares the Whig party in Parliament with a gang of thieves being run by Walpole, whose constant desire to be a "Great Man" (a common epithet for Walpole) ought to culminate in the antithesis of greatness: being hanged. His anonymous ''The Female Husband'' (1746) is a fictionalized account of a notorious case in which a female transvestite was tried for duping another woman into marriage; this was one of a number of small pamphlets, and cost sixpence at the time. Though a minor item in Fielding's œuvre, the subject is consistent with his ongoing preoccupation with fraud, shamming and masks. His greatest work was ''Tom Jones'' (1749), a meticulously constructed picaresque novel telling the convoluted and hilarious tale of how a foundling came into a fortune. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Henry Fielding」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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