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The History of the Adventures
ofJoseph Andrews
Lone Star College-Kingwood
LibraryHenry Fielding was
born on April 22, 1707, at the family estate, Sharpham Park, in Somerset,
England. His mother died when he was eleven years old, and, on his father's
remarriage, he was sent to school at Eton. He left Eton at seventeen
and spent the next four years as a gentleman of leisure. After studying
for 18 months at the University of Leiden in Holland, he began to support himself as a playwright
in London. He wrote 25 plays before his satire, Historical Register,
For the Year 1736, ridiculing Prime Minister Robert Walpole, led to the
passage of the Licensing Act. This act, requiring governmental approval
of all new plays, led to the end of his career as a playwright. Fielding
sought to 
support his wife and two children by studying
law and became a lawyer in 1740. He supplemented his income by writing for journals. Then
in 1741 he wrote a scathing satire of Samuel Richardson's popular novel, Pamela;
or Virtue Rewarded under the pseudonym of Conny Keyber. Soon
after, he began work on Joseph Andrews, and this comic novel.
often called the first realistic novel in English literature, was published
in 1742. His beloved wife, Charlotte Cradock, who was the model for
characters in his other novels, died in 1744. His support of the government
during the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745, gained him the appointment of Justice
of the Peace for two sections of central London in 1847. There he gained a
reputation as an honest and fair magistrate. He and his half-brother,
John , established the Bow Street Runners, a forerunner of the modern police
force, to help curb the rampant crime in 18th century London. In 1749
his second novel, The History of Tom Jones, was published, and,
two years later, his last novel, Amelia, appeared in print. The
gout that had left him a virtual cripple led him to seek relief in the
warmer climate of Portugal in June,1754. He died there on October 8,
1754.
Joseph Andrews - a footman in the household
of Lady BoobyPlot
Joseph, the virtuous and true footman, is forced
to leave the service of his mistress, Lady Booby, when he is no longer able
to ward off her amorous advances. He starts out to reunite with
his sweetheart, Fanny. Misfortunes on his journey continually waylay
him and his kindly traveling companion, Parson Adams. They encounter
both kindness and villainy, generosity and selfishness, on their journey.
Joseph and the Parson maintain their innocence and culpability throughout
their trials and tribulations. All ends well when Fanny and Joseph
are reunited and the secrets of their parentage is revealed.
Setting and Historical
Background
The novel
takes place in the early eighteenth century. It mirrors the lifestyle,
caste system, hypocrisy, and corruption of the times. England was
becoming a commercial power and wealth was shifting from the landowners to the
merchants.
The defeat of the Jacobites (the Catholics who wished to restore
the Stuart dynasty to the throne of England) at Culloden Moor in 1745 brought to
a close any serious threat to the Hanoverian line of British royalty. The
rural populace was being drawn to the cities with the lure of higher wages, but
the living conditions of the poor were still deplorable. The social caste
system was rigid, but beginning to give under the pressure of the new, moneyed
middle class
Topics
» hypocrisy
» satire
» role
of women
» morality
»
romantic love
»
crime
» innocence
» social class
|
Suggested Reference Books
Selected Books of Literary Criticism and Background Information
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PR 3454.J67 Joseph Andrews
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MLA International Bibliography | The most comprehensive index to literary criticism. Most articles are not available online. You will have to obtain them from the library or through interlibrary loan. Learn more about how to conduct a search on the MLA Bibliography.
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