E-text prepared by Sankar Viswanathan, Delphine Lettau, Joseph Cooper, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) The Augustan Reprint Society _HENRY FIELDING_ THE LOVERS ASSISTANT, OR, NEW ART OF LOVE (1760) Edited, with an Introduction by Claude E. Jones Publication Number 89 William Andrews Clark Memorial Library University of California Los Angeles 1961 * * * * * GENERAL EDITORS Richard C. Boys, _University of Michigan_ Ralph Cohen, _University of California, Los Angeles_ Vinton A. Dearing, _University of California, Los Angeles_ Lawrence Clark Powell, _Clark Memorial Library_ ASSISTANT EDITOR W. Earl Britton, _University of Michigan_ ADVISORY EDITORS Emmett L. Avery, _State College of Washington_ Benjamin Boyce, _Duke University_ Louis Bredvold, _University of Michigan_ John Butt, _University of Edinburgh_ James L. Clifford, _Columbia University_ Arthur Friedman, _University of Chicago_ Louis A. Landa, _Princeton University_ Samuel H. Monk, _University of Minnesota_ Ernest C. Mossner, _University of Texas_ James Sutherland, _University College, London_ H.T. Swedenberg, Jr., _University of California, Los Angeles_ CORRESPONDING SECRETARY Edna C. Davis, _Clark Memorial Library_ * * * * * INTRODUCTION The publishing history of this translation has been sketched by Cross, in his _History of Henry Fielding_, and may simply be summarized here. The first edition, entitled _Ovid's Art of Love Paraphrased and Adapted to the Present Time_ (or _Times_) was first issued in February, 1747, and was advertised in the _Gentleman's_ and _Scots_ Magazines in that month. During March, further advertisements appeared in the _London Magazine_ and the _St. James Evening Post_. The most extensive notice ran, however, in Fielding's own _Jacobite Journal_ (No. 15), where it served as basis for a detailed comparison between the art of love and the art of Jacobitism. Of this 1747 anonymous, original edition no copy is known.