Joseph Andrews (Dover Thrift)

330 Pages·1742·1.37 MB·English

by  Fielding Henry

DOVER · THRIFT · EDITIONS
All books complete and unabridged. All ″ x 8¼,″ paperbound.
Just $1.00–$2.50 in U.S.A.

A selection of the more than 200 titles in the series.
POETRY
101 GREAT AMERICAN POEMS, The American Poetry & Literacy Project
(ed.). (Available in U.S. only.) 40158-8 $1.00
ENGLISH ROMANTIC POETRY: An Anthology, Stanley Appelbaum (ed.).
256pp. 29282-7 $2.00
DOVER BEACH AND OTHER POEMS, Matthew Arnold. 112pp. 28037-3
$1.50
SELECTED POEMS FROM “FLOWERS OF EVIL,” Charles Baudelaire. 64pp.
28450-6 $1.00
BHACAVADGITA, Bhagavadgita. 112pp. 27782-8 $1.50
THE BOOK OF PSALMS, King James Bible. 128pp. 27541-8 $1.50
IMAGIST POETRY: AN ANTHOLOGY, Bob Blaisdell (ed.). 176pp.
(Available in U.S. Only.) 40875-2 $2.00
BLAKE’S SELECTED POEMS, William Bake. 96pp. 28517-0 $1.00
SONGS OF INNOCENCE AND SONGS OF EXPERIENCE, William Blake.
64pp. 27051-3 $1.00
THE CLASSIC TRADITION OF HAIKU: An Anthology, Faubion Bowers
(ed.). 96pp. 29274-6 $1.50
BEST POEMS OF THE BRONTE SISTERS (ed. by Candace Ward), Emily,
Anne, and Charlotte Brontë. 64pp. 29529-X $1.00
SONNETS FROM THE PORTUGUESE AND OTHER POEMS, Elizabeth
SONNETS FROM THE PORTUGUESE AND OTHER POEMS, Elizabeth
Barrett Browning. 64pp. 27052-1 $1.00
MY LAST DUCHESS AND OTHER POEMS, Robert Browning. 128pp.
27783-6 $1.00
POEMS AND SONGS, Robert Bums. 96pp. 26863-2 $1.00
SELECTED POEMS, George Gordon, Lord Byron. 112pp. 27784-4 $1.50
SELECTED CANTERBURY TALES, Geoffrey Chaucer. 144pp. 28241-4 $1.50
“LORD RANDAL” AND OTHER BRITISH BALLADS, Francis James Child
(ed.). 64pp. 28987-7 $1.00
THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER AND OTHER POEMS, Samuel
Taylor Coleridge. 80pp. 27266-4 $1.00
WAR IS KIND AND OTHER POEMS, Stephen Crane. 64pp. 40424-2 $1.00
THE CAVALIER POETS: An Anthology, Thomas Crofts (ed.). 80pp. 28766-1
$1.00
SELECTED POEMS, Emily Dickinson. 64pp. 26466-1 $1.00
SELECTED POEMS, John Donne. 96pp. 27788-7 $1.50
SELECTED POEMS, Paul Laurence Dunbar. 80pp. 29980-5 $1.00
“THE WASTE LAND” AND OTHER POEMS, T. S. Eliot. 64pp. (Available in
U.S. only.) 40061-1 $1.00
THE CONCORD HYMN AND OTHER POEMS, Ralph Waldo Emerson. 64pp.
29059-X $1.50
THE RUBÁIYÁT OF OMAR KHAYYÁM: FIRST AND FIFTH EDITIONS,
Edward FitzGerald. 64pp. 26467-X $1.00
A BOY’S WILL AND NORTH OF BOSTON, Robert Frost. 112pp. (Available
in U.S. only.) 26866-7 $1.00
THE ROAD NOT TAKEN AND OTHER POEMS, Robert Frost. 64pp.
(Available in U.S. only.) 27550-7 $1.00
HARDY’S SELECTED POEMS, Thomas Hardy. 80pp. 28753-X $1.50
“GOD’S GRANDEUR” AND OTHER POEMS, Gerard Manley Hopkins. 80pp.
28729-7 $1.00

DOVER THRIFT EDITIONS
GENERAL EDITOR: PAUL NEGRI
EDITOR OF THIS VOLUME: JOHN BERSETH

Copyright
Copyright © 2001 by Dover Publications, Inc.
All rights reserved under Pan American and International Copyright
Conventions.
Published in Canada by General Publishing Company, Ltd., 895 Don Mills
Road, 400-2 Park Centre, Toronto, Ontario, M3C 1W3.
Published in the United Kingdom by David & Charles, Brunel House, Forde
Close, Newton Abbot, Devon TQ12 4PU.

Bibliographical Note This Dover edition, first published in 2001, is an
unabridged republication of a standard edition of the work which was originally
published in London in 1742 under the title The History of the Adventures of
Joseph Andrews and His Friend Mr. Adams, Written in Imitation of the Manner
of Cervantes.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Fielding, Henry, 1707–
1754.
[History of the adventures of Joseph Andrews] Jo seph Andrews / Henry
Fielding.
p. cm.
9780486110820
1. England—Fiction. 2. Domestics—Fiction. 3. Young men—Fiction. 4. Male
friendship—Fiction. 5. Social classes—Fiction. 6. Clergy—Fiction. 1. Title.
PR3454 J65 2001
PR3454 J65 2001
823’.5–dc21
2001028000

Manufactured in the United States of America
Dover Publications, Inc., 31 East 2nd Street, Mineola, N.Y. 11501
Note
HENRY FIELDING (1707–1754), son of a general and an heiress, was born in
Somerset and grew up in Dorset, both in the west of England. He was educated
at Eton College, then moved to London, where his play Love and Several
Masques was produced at the Drury Lane Theatre in 1728. A restless,
adventurous youth, he went to the Netherlands to study at the University of
Leiden, but was forced to return to London in 1730 after his allowance was cut
off. Over the next seven years twenty-five of his plays were produced, many
satirizing contemporary politicians and other public figures. Fielding’s work,
facile and witty, was popular with audiences, especially the farce Tom Thumb
(1730). But officialdom held a dim view of the young author, and in 1737 one of
his targets, Prime Minister Sir Robert Walpole, presided over passage of the
Licensing Act. This law called for the lord chamberlain to license all plays
before production, in effect censoring the works and ending Fielding’s theatrical
career.
In 1740 Samuel Richardson’s Pamela, generally considered to be the first
novel in the English language, was published to popular acclaim. The next year,
when the parody Shamela (An Apology for the Life of Mrs. Shamela Andrews)
appeared, it was attributed to, but not claimed by, Henry Fielding. Nevertheless,
the work was clearly related to his next satirical work Joseph Andrews (1742),
both stylistically and in content. Critics consider the latter work much more than
parody, as Fielding’s talent for characterization, high comedy, and social
criticism raised his novel to the level of greatness. Joseph is seen as an admirable
hero, and Parson Adams, virtuous but a bit foolish, is one of the great comic
characters in English literature. The Russian novelists Tolstoy and Dostoevsky
were among the writers who expressed admiration for Joseph Andrews and
Fielding’s other novels. Many critics see Fielding’s work as part of the
picaresque tradition, recounting the adventures of an amusing, clever, often
admirable rogue. There are echoes of this tradition in Joseph Andrews, but it is
more pronounced in the mock epic Jonathan Wild, published in 1743 as part of
the three-volume Miscellanies, and in Tom Jones (1749), Fielding’s most
popular work. His last novel, Amelia (1751), is suffused with an increasingly
somber view of 18th-century English society.
Henry Fielding was a prolific writer—in addition to his novels he also edited
and wrote for journals of opinion, including The Champion (1739–41), The True
Patriot (1745–46), and The Jacobite’s Journal (1747)—but he also devoted
much energy to the practice of law. He was admitted to the bar in 1740 and,
through the influence of a patron, was appointed justice of the peace for
Westminster in 1748. Honest and hard-working, though increasingly hampered
by illness, Fielding used his position to strengthen the London police and to
break the power of the criminal gangs in the city. He resigned in 1753 and soon
traveled to Portugal in hopes of regaining his health. Rejuvenated at first, he had
a relapse and died in Lisbon on August 7, 1754. His Journal of a Voyage to
Lisbon was published in England the next year.
Preface
AS it is possible the mere English reader may have a different idea of romance
with the author of these little volumes, and may consequently expect a kind of
entertainment not to be found, nor which was even intended, in the following
pages; it may not be improper to premise a few words concerning this kind of
writing, which I do not remember to have seen hitherto attempted in our
language.
The Epic, as well as the Drama, is divided into tragedy and comedy. Homer,
who was the father of this species of poetry, gave us a pattern of both these,
though that of the latter kind is entirely lost; which Aristotle tells us, bore the
same relation to comedy which his Iliad bears to tragedy. And perhaps, that we
have no more instances of it among the writers of antiquity, is owing to the loss
of this great pattern, which, had it survived, would have found its imitators
equally with the other poems of this great original.
And farther, as this poetry may be tragic or comic, I will not scruple to say it
may be likewise either in verse or prose: for though it wants one particular,
which the critic enumerates in the constituent parts of an epic poem, namely
metre; yet, when any kind of writing contains all its other parts, such as fable,
action, characters, sentiments, and diction, and is deficient in metre only; it
seems, I think, reasonable to refer it to the epic; at least, as no critic hath thought
proper to range it under any other head, or to assign it a particular name to itself.
Thus the Telemachus of the archbishop of Cambray appears to me of the epic
kind, as well as the Odyssey of Homer; indeed, it is much fairer and more
reasonable to give it a name common with that species from which it differs only
in a single instance, than to confound it with those which it resembles in no
other. Such as those voluminous works, commonly called romances, namely,
Clelia, Cleopatra, Astræa, Cassandra, the Grand Cyrus, and innumerable others,
which contain, as I apprehend, very little instruction or entertainment.
Now, a comic romance is a comic epic poem in prose; differing from comedy;
as the serious epic from tragedy: its action being more extended and
comprehensive; containing a much larger circle of incidents, and introducing a
greater variety of characters. It differs from the serious romance in its fable and