Table Of ContentPENGUIN (A) CLASSICS
JOSEPH ANDREWS
HenryFieldingwasbornin 1707,atSharphamPark,nearGlastonbury
He was educated privately at first and then at Eton. In 1725 he
attempted to abduct anheiress and was bound overtokeep thepeace.
He then went to London, where, in 1728, he published a satirical
poem, TheMasquerade, and a comedy, Love in Several Masques. From
1728 to 1729 he was a student of literature at Leyden University,
returning to London in the autumn ofthe latter year. Between then
and 1737 he wrote some twenty-five dramatic pieces including
comedies, adaptations of Moliere, farces, ballad operas, burlesques,
andaseriesoftopicalsatires,suchasPasquinand TheHistoricalRegister,
which lampooned Sir Robert Walpole and his government. It was
partly because of this last play that Walpole introduced the Stage
Licensing Act in 1737, which effectively ended Fielding's career as a
dramatist. Afterthisheembarkedonacareerinthelawand wascalled
to the Bar in 1740, but he had little success as a barrister. In 1734 he
marriedCharlotteCradock, themodelforSophieWesternandalsofor
theheroineofhis lastnovel, Amelia (1751).
His novel-writing career began with Shamela in 1741, a burlesque
written in reaction to, whathesawas, thesmug moralitypropounded
by Richardson's Pamela. In the following year he published his own
alternative conception of the art and purpose of the novel, Joseph
Andrews, which achieved immediatepopularity. His masterpiece Tom
Jones,oneofthegreatcomicnovelsinEnglishliterature,waspublished
in 1749. The Miscellanies (includingJonathan Wild) were published in
1743. After Walpole's fall he wrote pro-governmentjournalism, and
he produced two weekly anti-Jacobitepapers, The TruePatriot (1745-
6) and TheJacobite'sJournal (1747-8). Laterhe ran TheCoventGarden
Journal which contains someofhis bestsatire.
In 1748 Fielding was commissioned as a Justice ofthe Peace for
Westminster and in the following year became Chairman of the
Quarter Sessions ofWestminster. He and his brother,John Fielding,
wereprominentin developing thepoliceforce, andbetween 1749and
1752 Fielding wrote agood deal on urgent legal and social problems
For many years hehadsuffered fromgoutandin April 1754ill-health
forced him to resign his post and he left for Lisbon. He died on 8
October 1754.
•
R. F. Brissenden is Reader in English at the Australian National
University. HeistheauthorofVirtueinDistress. Studiesin theNovelof
Sentimentfrom Richardson to Sade% and has edited three volumes in the
series Studies in the Eighteenth Century. He has also published thr^r
collections ofpoetry
HENRY
FIELDING
JOSEPH ANDREWS
EDITED BY
R. F. BRISSENDEN
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CONTENTS
Introduction 7
Note on the Text 19
For Further Reading 20
JOSEPH ANDREWS
23
Notes 326
:
INTRODUCTION
Joseph Andrewsis a thoroughly delightful book, and one which
speaks as directly and engagingly ro the modern reader as it did
to Henry Fielding's own contemporaries. As the outstanding
success ofthe film version of Tom Jonesso convincingly demon-
strated, Fielding's fiction has an enduring relevance and fresh-
ness. It is clear that there are certain aspects of his art and
character with which people ofour own day feel an immediate
sympathy-and I am notthinking merelyofhis robust common
sense or his apparent tolerance of sexual freedom. Tom Jones
thefilm, like TomJonesthenovel, would nothavebeen nearlyso
interesting hadit been nothing but agood-humoured andbawdy
romp. HenryFielding wasboth a passionately moral man andan
extremely intelligent and gifted writer. This is why the vision
of life embodied in his novels is not only entertaining but also
so significant and illuminating.
He was also a highly conscious and talented literary crafts-
man. To take a fairly obvious example, his ironic reworking of
the parable of the good Samaritan in Book I Chapter 12 of
Joseph Andrews owes its effectiveness as much to the skilful
economy and timing with which the incident is presented as it
does to the clarity ot the moral insight which it provides.
Joseph, stripped and beaten by robbers, is left to die in the
roadside ditch by the hypocritical and selfish passengers of a
passing stage-coach, who are reluctant to share either their
clothes or their seats with a naked and bleeding man
and it is more than probable, poor Joseph ... must have perished,
unless the postillion, (a lad who hath since been transported for
robbing a hen-roost) had voluntarily stript oft* a great coat, his only
garment, at the same time swearing a great oath, (for which he was
rebuked by the passengers) 'that he would rather ride in his shirt all
his life, than suffer a fellow-creature to lie in so miserable a condi-
tion/
The essence of Fielding's art and compassion would seem to be
embodiedin theasides in which heinforms usthatthe postillion
was later transported for theft, and that he was rebuked by the
passengers for swearing. The technique is rather obvious, per-
haps - indeed it may be said of the whole scene that it is too
JOSEPH ANDREWS
stylized to be completely naturalistic. It has vigour and terse-
ness, but they are the vigour and terseness of the drama rather
than the novel - the dialogue in which the characters briefly
reveal their petty self-interest reads like a revue sketch by
Brecht. But a closer examination of the passage brings to light
some unexpectedsubtleties. The 'great oath* for instance, which
the postillion swears, echoes in a significant way a possibly
greater oath which has been uttered at the very beginning of
the scene, and which has occasioned no comment at all. When
the lady amongst the passengers hears Joseph's groans she calls
eagerly to the coachman to stop and see what is wrong.
Upon which he bid the postillion 'alight, and look into the ditch.'
He did so, and returned, 'that there was a man sitting upright as
nakedaseverhe was born/-'OJ-sus,' cry'd the lady,'A naked man!
Dearcoachman,driveonand leave nim.'
Fielding makes no comment on the lady's blasphemy, but the
ironic way in which it points up the twin themes of false
charity and sexual hypocrisy, themes which are central to the
whole novel, suggests that its occurrence is scarcely accidental.
The more closely one examines Joseph Andrews the clearer it
becomes that there is very little in the book that can be called
accidental. Like Tom Jones it is carefully planned and con-
structed, although the shape and significance of its structure
are not so immediately apparent as they are in Fielding's
second novel. Indeed it is only relatively recently that their
existence and their purpose have begun to be appreciated.
The general opinion until a few years ago, was that Joseph
Andrews was to a large extent something of a happy accident.
It was assumed that Fielding had begun the book simply as a
parody ofPamela or, Virtue Rewarded, by Samuel Richardson,
:
with side-glances at a couple of works by other writers, and
that somehow the literary joke had developed into a realistic
novel.
At first sight there is much to support this view. The general
pattern, after all, is not uncommon. Joseph Andrews, Fielding
tells us on the title page, is 'Written in Imitation ofThe Manner
of Cervantes, Author of Don Quixote9, and Don Quixote cer-
tainly undergoes a transformation of this sort. Pamela itself was
conceivedoforiginally by itsauthor as a didacticstory in letters
rather than a novel. Tristram Shandy (the first volumes of
8
