Fielding

At Lyme Regis, young Henry Fielding pursued a merchant’s heiress so insistently that her guardian, the town records say, feared for his life. The future novelist’s first recorded love affair begins with a distinctly theatrical commotion.

Austin Dobson traces Fielding’s early years in eighteenth-century England, from his childhood beside Dorset’s winding Stour to his schooldays at Eton. Born into an ancient family, Henry loses his mother while still a boy; later, his youthful passion brings alarmed guardians and a hurried change of plans. Dobson sifts records, recollections and Fielding’s own writing to distinguish what is known from what has merely been guessed, following the boy toward the stage and the literary life. Which parts of this unruly young man’s story would find their way into his plays and novels?

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