Tom Jones Henry Fielding by W. Somerset Maugham

Tom Jones

Henry Fielding

Edited by W. Somerset Maugham

Pan Books, 1964, paperback

Very Good Condition, some edge and shelf wear, some rubbing and bumping to edges and corners, some rubbing and marking to covers, age toned pages, previous owners’ initials on half title page (see photographs)

“When Henry Fielding’s great novel, Tom Jones, was published in the mid-eighteenth century, it caused violent controversy.  The great Dr Johnson, certainly no prude, declared it ‘Shocking… I scarcely know of a more corrupt work’, Yet a few years later the historian Gibbon took a broader view and wrote: “It will survive the Palace of the Escorial and the Imperial Eagle of the House in Austria’.  IN 1963 the Escorial stands in all its splendour; Tom Jones is read and loved by millions every year; but who today remembers Austria’s ‘Imperial Eagle’?
Tom Jones, the novel’s hero, is an incurably amorous young man whose many boisterous antics keep the story moving briskly.  A foundling baby of dubious origin, he has been brought up by the kindly Squire Allworthy before bursting on the world.  Many other brilliantly drawn characters crowd the pages, including the lovely Sophia whose shape was ‘not only delicate but exact’ and those irrepressible old hypocrites Thwackum and Square.
Re-reading Tom Jones, W. Somerset Maugham found many tediously long passages which he felt could be profitably shortened or cut out without in any way spoiling the novel’s strength and charm.  He therefore presents this new revision of an ever-popular classic of English Literature.”