FIELDING, HENRY (1707-1754).--Novelist, was _b._ at Sharpham Park, near Glastonbury. His father was General Edmund F., descended from the Earls of Denbigh and Desmond, and his mother was the _dau._ of Sir Henry Gould of Sharpham Park. His childhood was spent at East Stour, Dorset, and his education was received at first from a tutor, after which he was sent to Eton. Following a love affair with a young heiress at Lyme Regis he was sent to Leyden to study law, where he remained until his _f._, who had entered into a second marriage, and who was an extravagant man, ceased to send his allowance. Thrown upon his own resources, he came to London and began to write light comedies and farces, of which during the next few years he threw off nearly a score. The drama, however, was not his true vein, and none of his pieces in this kind have survived, unless _Tom Thumb_, a burlesque upon his contemporary playwrights, be excepted. About 1735 he _m._ Miss Charlotte Cradock, a beautiful and amiable girl to whom, though he gave her sufficient cause for forbearance, he was devotedly attached. She is the prototype of his "Amelia" and "Sophia." She brought him £1500, and the young couple retired to East Stour, where he had a small house inherited from his mother. The little fortune was, however, soon dissipated; and in a year he was back in London, where he formed a company of comedians, and managed a small theatre in the Haymarket. Here he produced successfully _Pasquin, a Dramatic Satire on the Times_, and _The Historical Register for 1736_, in which Walpole was satirised. This enterprise was brought to an end by the passing of the Licensing Act, 1737, making the _imprimatur_ of the Lord Chamberlain necessary to the production of any play. F. thereupon read law at the Middle Temple, was called to the Bar in 1740, and went the Western Circuit. The same year saw the publication of Richardson's _Pamela_, which inspired F. with the idea of a parody, thus giving rise to his first novel, _Joseph Andrews_. As, however, the characters, especially Parson Adams, developed in his hands, the original idea was laid aside, and the work assumed the form of a regular novel. It was _pub._ in 1742, and though sharing largely in the same qualities as its great successor, _Tom Jones_, its reception, though encouraging, was not phenomenally cordial. Immediately after this a heavy blow fell on F. in the death of his wife. The next few years were occupied with writing his _Miscellanies_, which contained, along with some essays and poems, two important works, _A Journey from this World to the Next_, and _The History of Jonathan Wild the Great_, a grave satire; and he also conducted two papers in support of the Government, _The True Patriot_ and _The Jacobite Journal_, in consideration of which he was appointed Justice of the Peace for Middlesex and Westminster, and had a pension conferred upon him. In 1746 he set convention at defiance by marrying