Henry Fielding

Fielding, Henry (1707–54), English novelist and dramatist. His satirical comedies and farces, especially Tom Thumb (1730), a burlesque on the popular playwrights of the day, angered the government of Robert Walpole, provoking the enactment of a law to censor the stage. Fielding abandoned writing for the stage and turned to novels. Joseph Andrews (1742) and his masterpiece, Tom Jones (1749), are boisterous, picaresque works with strong, moral content.