See moreA milestone in the history of the English novel, Tom Jones draws readers into a world teeming with memorable characters. This epic of everyday life chronicles the adventures of Tome Jones, who was abandoned as an infant and grows into a lusty, imprudent young man. Promising to mend his ways, Tom competes with his abusive rival for the affections of a wealthy squire's daughter, and learns the truth about his identity, in this discerning comedy of human foibles and self-discovery.
For Samuel T. Coleridge the plot of Tom Jones was, along with that of Oedipus The King, the most perfect ever constructed. Fielding used all his art and all the craft he had amassed as a successful playwright for the eighteenth-century London stage to tell this hugely entertaining story of a foundling and how he arrives, through sexual misadventures and elaborate disasters, to claim his legitimacy, his fortune, and his true love.