History of Tom Jones, a Foundling Kindle Edition

Tom Jones is probably the most influential novel in English history, pioneering elements like complex characterization, social criticism and authorial interjection. But you already knew that.What you want to know is, is this a good book for us in the 21st century. And here, it's not so clear. The dialogue is pretty brisk, and some of the exchanges (the stereotypical Whig Mrs. Western arguing with her Jacobite brother is a particular treat) are actually funny. The latter part of the novel evolves into a farce, with a dozen characters engaged in scheming against one another, while Tom and Sophia helplessly go along. Farce works better in drama, where it has a faster pace, but it's always a welcome mode of comedy. You don't see enough farces.Some of the characters are evocative (why do I picture Blifil as looking like Ted Cruz?) but some are not: Dowling is just a lawyer, and Mrs. Miller is a good woman, like thousands who have come since, and that's all there is to it. It's not as if every character needs to, or can, be a fully realized person, but the parts of the novel spent with these human plot devices do feel mechanical.But Mr. Partridge, Tom's traveling companion, is in a different category altogether, and he just poisons the parts of the novel that he features in (chiefly the middle third). Eighteenth Century literature has a depressing reliance on goofy loose-lipped sidekicks: Mr. Partridge, Hugh Strap, Humphrey Clinker, Andrew Fairservice, Friday. Sometimes they're servants, but sometimes they're just stupid friends.Part of this must be practical: It's difficult to follow a wandering hero (and why are the heroes of these novels always wandering? But that's a different question altogether) without giving him a friend to talk to. Maybe early novelists had a hard time sketching characters who didn't have a way to discuss the ongoing action.But mostly, I think this is the bad influence of Don Quixote, which was becoming increasingly popular in England during this period. Sancho Panza is OK, and he's certainly the funniest element of that leaden tome. But Mr. Partridge *is* Sancho Panza, cowardice, superstition and all, and one Sancho Panza was more than enough. You know? There's a limited number of things that a silly, selfless, lazy pal can do, and it's hard to read about the same old doofus, yet again.

314. The History of Tom Jones: a foundling by Henry Fielding (Novel-Audible/E Book-Fiction) 5* I read along with the Audible of the novel which I found a highly delightful and entertaining experience.The narrator, Bill Homewood, who performed the audio version of the work was excellent doing the various characters as well as the invisible narrator (author) of the story. The Synopsis is as follows:A foundling of mysterious parentage brought up by Mr. Allworthy on his country estate, Tom Jones is deeply in love with the seemingly unattainable Sophia Western, the beautiful daughter of the neighboring squire—though he sometimes succumbs to the charms of the local girls. When Tom is banished to make his own fortune and Sophia follows him to London to escape an arranged marriage, the adventure begins. A vivid Hogarthian panorama of eighteenth-century life, spiced with danger and intrigue, bawdy exuberance and good-natured authorial interjections, Tom Jones is one of the greatest and most ambitious comic novels in English literature.It is rather brilliant, and there is no lack of shenanigans as we follow Jones through his history and the reader never knows when and where the author will abruptly go off on a tangent, told in a most eloquent manner, end with a flourish and no doubt tossed his quill down and took a bow. I am either taken in by some farce or thoroughly enchanted by this author. As Fielding is rather the loquacious writer this read comes in Audible time at almost 38 hours or roughly 1,000 pages but worth every minute spent on it.

The most important factor for the Kindle version of the Modern Library Classics edition of Tom Jones is how well the critical apparatus is handled. It is, in general, handled very well. Footnotes work. The process of reading emendations on an electronic device will never be as seamless as reading with physical paper, and any 18th century work requires emendations. Additionally, the greatest works benefit from emendations where they do not require them. The good news is that the Modern Library edition is very good. The notes are explanatory, scholarly, and never abstruse. The "Introduction," maps, and other material are placed at the end for the Kindle edition, and they do not fare particularly well.If you have already read Tom Jones, this is a great way to have it in a portable format. If you are a person who knows what Tom Jones is and wants to read it, this is an affordable way to read a "real" (scholarly) edition. If, however, you mean to study Tom Jones, you will likely need a paper copy, and probably Battestin's edition.

Having read an edition of Pepys Diary which was written in the 17th century with no problems I didn't anticipate a problem with this, written in the 18th century. Having not seen the printed version I don't know if the problem is just with the Kindle edition which resembles either a computer generated word for word translation from a language such as Latin or whether the text for Kindle is an uncorrected result from a primitive Optical Character Recognition program. With patience and a bit of imagination it is possible to decipher it but I couldn't face doing it for the nearly 1000 pages. It is described as a humorous novel but in this case the joke is on the buyer. However it is free so give it a try if this has aroused your curiosity.

One of those great books that I hadn't read, so I thought it about time to take it on. A superb satire that made me laugh out loud on several occasions. I found the prose more fluent than I had imagined but it may put off those who find it a struggle to read earlier forms of modern English. It was well worth the effort and I read it quickly despite its length and the fact that I needed to refer to various dictionaries - Grose' 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue was a useful aid. Definitely recommended.

Having been introduced to Tom Jones as a film, some many years ago, I then read the original bookas a library copy and enjoyed the romp and quaint elegantly over-polite language. I bought the Kindle version to experience all this over again. An enjoyable revisitation, if you have the time to study the flowery language and spellings.

A classic picaresque comic yarn. I started it when I was 17 and ploughed to a stop in a few pages, up to my neck in the treacle of eighteenth-century prose. Or perhaps sawdust rather than treacle: this is dry stuff, after all. But this time, with many more years and books under my belt, I was able to enjoy and even relish the orotund sentences, the disingenuous authorial posturing and the windy dialogue.Briefly: Tom, a bastard, is taken under the wing of the benevolent Squire Allworthy, and later falls for Sophia, pure-hearted daughter of a neighbour, the blustering Squire Western. Allworthy's nephew Blifil schemes to get Tom out of the way of any inheritance, and after numerous bawdy and domestic episodes, Tom is turned out and hits the road. Rambling across the land he has many more adventures, before fetching up in London. There the other characters gather for various reasons, and after much confusion things come to a satisfying end.There's a lot to laugh at in this book: the passage in mock-Homeric prose about a slattern beating up a disapproving congregation in the churchyard had me choking on the bus. But then there's a lot of this book in general, and I could have done with the chuckles being closer together. Fielding paints his world in conversation and psychology: the senses are little catered for, so that, for instance, the long grey middle of the novel is a bewildering succession of inns and roads and bedrooms, with no physical descriptions to anchor the reader in the world. Reading this over months on my commute, I soon lost track of people, places and incidents. That said, it's good fun all the way along, and the close satirical observation of manners and character retains its good-natured bite across the centuries.Much of this may be illustrated by a paragraph in which Blifil refers to the wisdom of the hypocrite priest Thwackum and the dissolute philosopher Square:"For these reasons Mr Blifil was so desirous of the match that he intended to deceive Sophia, by pretending love to her; and to deceive her father and his own uncle, by pretending he was beloved by her. In doing this he availed himself of the piety of Thwackum, who held, that if the end proposed was religious (as surely matrimony is), it mattered not how wicked were the means. As to other occasions, he used to apply the philosophy of Square, which taught, that the end was immaterial, so that the means were fair and consistent with moral rectitude. To say truth, there were few occurrences in life on which he could not draw advantage from the precepts of one or other of those great masters."If that doesn't draw up the corners of your lips, this novel is probably not for you!

In Tom Jones, Fielding hangs a huge and rambling tale on the life and travels of a foundling. Often cited alongside Richardson's Pamela: Or Virtue Rewarded (Oxford World's Classics) as the first great novels of English literature (however innacurate that label might be), this works very differently stylistically.Fielding breaks the cardinal rule of novel-writing ("show, don't tell") and pulls it off magisterially. Tom is a lad with a good heart but that doesn't stop him falling into all manner of bawdy situations with a combination of gusto and innocence. As a precursor to Dickens, Fielding manages to cram in a whole social panorama, and controls his story precisely.A great C18th classic that's also a very easy, immensely good-natured, and very funny read.