23 Facts About Henry Fielding

Henry Fielding was an English novelist, irony writer, and dramatist known for earthy humour and satire.

Henry Fielding holds a place in the history of law enforcement, having used his authority as a magistrate to found the Bow Street Runners, London's first intermittently funded, full-time police force.

In 1725, Henry Fielding tried to abduct his cousin Sarah Andrews while she was on her way to church.

In 1728, Henry Fielding travelled to Leiden to study classics and law at the university.

Henry Fielding retired from the theatre and resumed his legal career to support his wife Charlotte Craddock and two children by becoming a barrister, joining the Middle Temple in 1737 and being called to the bar there in 1740.

Henry Fielding never stopped writing political satire and satires of current arts and letters.

From 1734 to 1739, Henry Fielding wrote anonymously for the leading Tory periodical, The Craftsman, against the Prime Minister, Sir Robert Walpole.

Henry Fielding's patron was the opposition Whig MP George Lyttelton, a boyhood friend from Eton to whom he later dedicated Tom Jones.

Henry Fielding dedicated his play Don Quixote in England to the opposition Whig leader Lord Chesterfield.

Henry Fielding dedicated his 1735 play The Universal Gallant to Charles Spencer, 3rd Duke of Marlborough, a political follower of Chesterfield.

Henry Fielding wrote at least two articles for it in 1737 and 1738.

Henry Fielding continued to air political views in satirical articles and newspapers in the late 1730s and early 1740s.

Henry Fielding was the main writer and editor from 1739 to 1740 for the satirical paper The Champion, which was sharply critical of Walpole's government and of pro-government literary and political writers.

Henry Fielding later became chief writer for the Whig government of Henry Pelham.

Henry Fielding took to novel writing in 1741, angered by Samuel Richardson's success with Pamela.

Henry Fielding's first success was an anonymous parody of that novel, called Shamela.

Henry Fielding followed this with Joseph Andrews, an original work supposedly dealing with Pamela's brother, Joseph.

Henry Fielding implicitly compares the Whig party in Parliament with a gang of thieves run by Walpole, whose constant desire to be a "Great Man" ought to culminate in the antithesis of greatness: hanging.

Henry Fielding married Charlotte Craddock in 1734 at the Church of St Mary in Charlcombe, Somerset.

Henry Fielding died in 1744, and he later modelled the heroines of Tom Jones and of Amelia on her.

Three years after Charlotte's death, Henry Fielding disregarded public opinion by marrying her former maid Mary Daniel, who was pregnant.

John Henry Fielding, despite being blind by then, succeeded his older brother as chief magistrate, becoming known as the "Blind Beak of Bow Street" for his ability to recognise criminals by their voices alone.

Henry Fielding then published Examples of the Interposition of Providence in the Detection and Punishment of Murder, a treatise rejecting deistic and materialistic visions of the world in favour of belief in God's presence and divine judgement, arguing that the murder rate was rising due to neglect of the Christian religion.