Little is known as to when the conception of _Tom Jones_ first shaped itself in his mind, of where he lived during the writing of the great Comic Epic, or of the time occupied in its completion. Appropriately for a book expressly designed "to recommend goodness and innocence" the plan of the novel was suggested, many years before its appearance, by the 'good Lord Lyttelton'; and we know, further, that the writing occupied 'some thousands of hours'; but _Tom Jones_ does not emerge into definite existence till the summer of 1748. Legend it is true, attesting to the greatness of the achievement contained in the six little volumes, endows many localities with the fame of their origin. A well-credited contemporary writer, the Rev. Richard Graves, declared that the novelist "while he was writing his novel of Tom Jones" lived at Tiverton (Twerton), one and a half miles from Bath, and dined daily at Prior Park the seat of his munificent and pious friend Ralph Allen. Mr Graves says that Fielding then lived in "the first house on the right hand with a spread eagle over the door." [2] Salisbury is insistent that part at least of the great novel was written at Milford House, near to that city. An anonymous old engraver asserts the same honour for Fielding's Farm at East Stour, an assertion certainly not confirmed by the newly found documents concerning Fielding's sale of property at Stour in 1738. Twickenham claims that the book was wholly composed in the house in Back Lane. And to an ancient building at Tintern Parva in the Wye Valley, said to have once been the lodging of the Abbot of Tintern, was also assigned the reputation of being the birthplace of the English novel. If the latter tradition were true, the fact that it was in the Harlequin chamber of the Abbots of Glastonbury that Henry Fielding was born, becomes strangely matched by the birth, some forty years later, of his masterpiece, in the lodging of the Abbot of Tintern. The one point of real interest in all these traditions is the fact that the fame of _Tom Jones_ has been sufficient to create a widespread popular legend. The truth probably is that the book was written in the many shifting scenes of Fielding's life during these years; now at Bath whither his gout and the generous hospitality of Ralph Allen would take him; now in Salisbury, the home of his boyhood, and the scene of his courtship with the lovely original of Sophia Western; possibly in his own county of Somerset; and most probably both at Twickenham, and in London.