Tom Jones
By: by Henry Fielding ; with an introduction by Martin C. Battesin ; text edited by Fredson Bowers.
Contributors: Bowers, Fredson.
Edition: 1st Modern Library ed.
Publisher: Modern Library
Published: 1985
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 982
Subjects: Identity (Psychology) -- Fiction; Foundlings -- Fiction; Young men -- Fiction; England -- Fiction
Genres: Fiction.
Description: For 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. Describes the foundling, Tom, who grows to be athletic, charismatic, generous, and filled with "the glorious lust of doing good" but with a tendency toward dissolution. He leaves home to seek his fortune and his real identity.