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PENGUIN (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 PENGUIN BOOKS PENGUINBOOKS PublishedbythePenguinGroup PenguinBooksLtd,27WrightsLane,LondonW85TZ,England VikingPenguin,adivisionofPenguinBooksUSAInc. 375HudsonStreet,NewYork,NewYork 10014,USA PenguinBooksAustraliaLtd,Ringwood,Victoria,Australia PenguinBooksCanadaLtd,2801 JohnStreet,Markham,Ontario,CanadaL3R 1B4 PenguinBooks(NZ)Ltd, 182-190WairauRoad,Auckland 10,NewZealand PenguinBooksLtd,RegisteredOffices:Harmondsworth,Middlesex,England Firstpublished 1742 PublishedinPenguinEnglishLibrary1977 ReprintedinPenguinClassics 1985 9 10 8 © Introductionandnotescopyright R-F.Brissenden, 1977 Allrightsreserved PrintedinEnglandbyClaysLtd,StIvespic ExceptintheUnitedStatesofAmerica, thisbookissoldsubjecttothecondition thatitshallnot,bywayoftradeorotherwise, belent,re-sold,hiredout,orotherwisecirculated withoutthepublisher'spriorconsentinanyformof bindingorcoverotherthanthatinwhichitis publishedandwithoutasimilarcondition includingthisconditionbeingimposed onthesubsequentpurchaser 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 terseness, 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