btuftin reviewed The History of Tom Jones by Henry Fielding
Review of 'The History of Tom Jones' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
Long out of copyright this book can be found for free at project Gutenberg.
This is a massive book and quite wordy by modern standards. It takes its time introducing the players and setting the stage, and I'd understand anyone who gave it up halfway through, but it eventually paid off for me with the last third being somewhat of a page turner.
What kept me going, other than my particular stubbornness when it comes to finishing books I've started, was all the excellent observations on human nature and the nature of writers, critics and readers, the latter two whom the author explicitly equates. Each of the 18 books the novel consists of starts with an introductory chapter not directly connected to the novel, but an essay on some topic more or less related, and these contain some of the best bits of writing in the book. I'll conclude …
Long out of copyright this book can be found for free at project Gutenberg.
This is a massive book and quite wordy by modern standards. It takes its time introducing the players and setting the stage, and I'd understand anyone who gave it up halfway through, but it eventually paid off for me with the last third being somewhat of a page turner.
What kept me going, other than my particular stubbornness when it comes to finishing books I've started, was all the excellent observations on human nature and the nature of writers, critics and readers, the latter two whom the author explicitly equates. Each of the 18 books the novel consists of starts with an introductory chapter not directly connected to the novel, but an essay on some topic more or less related, and these contain some of the best bits of writing in the book. I'll conclude with just two examples of such, as they are even better in context and you'll just have to pick up the book for the full essays.
First an observation about reality vs. fiction:
There are a set of religious, or rather moral writers, who teach that virtue is the certain road to happiness, and vice to misery, in this world. A very wholesome and comfortable doctrine, and to which we have but one objection, namely, that it is not true.
And then the finale to the author's farewell to the reader, where he's just defended some particular qualities of his work against comparison with lesser books:
All these works, however, I am well convinced, will be dead long before this page shall offer itself to thy perusal; for however short the period may be of my own performances, they will most probably outlive their own infirm author, and the weakly productions of his abusive contemporaries.
History appears to have proven this observation mostly correct.
