Tom Jones Updated Review

Tom Jones

Reading the Classics Updated

https://theworldaccordingtocosmos.com/?author=1

https://theworldaccordingtocosmos.com/?author=1

Tom Jones

Tom Jones

Reading the Classics Updated

As part of my long‑running goal of reading the great classic works, I finally conquered Tom Jones. I use the word conquered deliberately. For me, this sprawling eighteenth‑century novel was a challenge—because of its length, its constant authorial asides and observations, and, as is typical of novels from that period, its heavy use of classical allusions. Many of those references are obscure, and some of the attitudes—racism, sexism, and other “isms”—are jarring to modern readers.

There is also, to use a modern cliché, too much telling and not enough showing. Like many classic books, Tom Jones is easier to read in a Kindle or electronic edition, where historical references and antiquated vocabulary can be quickly looked up.

Despite these challenges, the novel is also surprisingly modern in some of its concerns. In certain respects, Tom Jones can be read as a proto‑feminist novel. It argues that women should be free to choose whether—and whom—they marry, and that parents should not coerce their children into unwanted matches. Fielding also criticizes the widespread anti‑Irish prejudice of his time, an element that feels more pointed and deliberate than many readers might expect.

In short, Tom Jones would probably be unpublishable by today’s commercial standards. Yet, despite its excesses and frustrations, it was ultimately worth the effort.

Literary Reputation: Why Tom Jones Still Matters

Even readers who struggle with Tom Jones rarely dispute its importance. Alongside Samuel Richardson, Henry Fielding is widely regarded as a founder of the English novel, and Tom Jones is consistently treated as his most accomplished and influential work. The novel helped demonstrate that prose fiction could combine a complex plot, a broad social canvas, and sustained moral inquiry without sacrificing humor or narrative energy. [mynbc5.com], [cnbc.com]

Critics have long admired the book’s structure. Samuel Taylor Coleridge famously claimed that Tom Jones possessed one of the “three most perfect plots ever planned,” praising its architectural balance despite its apparent sprawl. The novel’s eighteen books are carefully arranged, with mirrored episodes and thematic symmetries that reward attentive reading. [congress.gov]

Britannica emphasizes the same point, noting Fielding’s “great comic gusto,” his vast gallery of characters, and his vivid depiction of both high and low life across England. What distinguishes Tom Jones from many earlier narratives is not just its scale, but the author’s conscious control of that scale. Fielding’s prefatory chapters—placed at the beginning of each Book—are effectively miniature essays on storytelling, morality, and human nature. [usmint.gov]

From the opening pages, Fielding signals that this will be a self-aware performance. One of the novel’s best‑known passages compares the author to an innkeeper rather than a private host:

“An author ought to consider himself, not as a gentleman who gives a private or eleemosynary treat, but rather as one who keeps a public ordinary, at which all persons are welcome for their money.” [britannica.com]

Elsewhere, he unapologetically defends his habit of digression, anticipating many modern reader complaints before they arise:

“Reader, I think proper… to acquaint thee that I intend to digress, through this whole history, as often as I see occasion…” [encyclopedia.com]

And amid the satire, Fielding can still land a line of genuine moral force:

“No one hath seen beauty in its highest lustre who hath never seen it in distress.” [encyclopedia.com]

The result is a novel that is exuberant, intrusive, and opinionated—but also remarkably confident about what it is doing and why.

Henry Fielding: A Brief Biography

Henry Fielding (1707–1754) lived a life that helps explain the unusual blend of comedy, satire, and moral seriousness in Tom Jones. Born in Somerset and educated at Eton, he developed a strong grounding in classical literature that later shaped the novel’s mock‑epic tone and allusive style. [mynbc5.com]

Fielding initially made his reputation as a playwright and political satirist. His theatrical career was marked by sharp attacks on corruption and hypocrisy, which eventually drew the ire of the government and contributed to restrictions on the stage. He later turned to the law, becoming a magistrate and playing a significant role in the reform of urban justice. Britannica credits him with helping establish a new approach to law enforcement in London, experience that darkened and deepened his later fiction. [cnbc.com]

His major novels—Shamela (1741), Joseph Andrews (1742), Tom Jones (1749), and Amelia (1751)—helped transform the novel into a planned, socially observant form capable of surveying contemporary life in all its contradictions. Fielding died in 1754 in Lisbon, where he had traveled in search of relief from chronic illness. [mynbc5.com], [cnbc.com]

Cromwell, the Interregnum, and the Restoration: A Necessary Backdrop

Although Tom Jones is firmly an eighteenth‑century novel, it unfolds in a society still shaped by the political and religious upheavals of the previous century. Understanding that background helps clarify many of the book’s assumptions about authority, morality, and social order.

After the execution of King Charles I in 1649, England entered a period without a monarch known as the Interregnum. During these years, the country experimented with various republican forms of government, culminating in Oliver Cromwell’s rule as Lord Protector. This period was marked by political instability, religious tension, and widespread resentment of military and Puritan authority. [en.wikipedia.org], [englishlit…ature.info]

In 1660, the monarchy was restored with the return of Charles II. The Restoration re‑established Anglican orthodoxy and revived cultural life, including drama and literature. Yet it did not erase the memory of civil war, regicide, and republican rule. Those memories lingered for generations and continued to shape English attitudes toward power, class, and religion. [govmint.com]

Fielding’s world is downstream of these events. Even when Tom Jones focuses on romance, inheritance, and personal virtue, it does so against a backdrop of inherited anxieties about legitimacy, authority, and social stability. Modern studies of the novel note that it also contains references to the Jacobite rising of 1745, itself a later aftershock of the long Stuart succession crisis. [nasb.com]

Presentism: Reading the Past Without Flattening It

One of the most interesting questions that arose while reading Tom Jones is how much older works should be judged by modern standards. Bill Maher often refers to this issue as presentism: the tendency to impose contemporary moral values on historical texts. The term originates in historiography, but it applies neatly to literature as well.

Maher’s commentary echoes critics such as Lionel Trilling and Harold Bloom, who argued that literature must be understood in its historical context. When we read Tom Jones solely through the lens of modern gender politics or class consciousness, we risk missing the novel’s innovations, its humor, and its critique of the society it depicts.

This does not mean ignoring the book’s problematic elements. Rather, it means holding two truths at once: the novel reflects its era, and it also transcends it. Sophia Western may not conform to modern feminist ideals, but within her historical context she exhibits agency, moral clarity, and resistance to patriarchal control. Fielding’s satire of hypocrisy and class pretension remains sharp even today.

Presentism tends to flatten a work into a moral checklist. Reading historically allows us to experience the novel as a conversation across time, rather than as a relic to be judged and discarded.

Closing Thoughts

Tom Jones is messy, funny, humane, and occasionally exhausting. It is a novel that helped invent the modern form, and reading it today requires both patience and perspective. When we resist presentism and allow the book to speak in its own voice, we discover a work that still has something meaningful to say about love, virtue, hypocrisy, and the unpredictable turns of life.

Reading Projects and Lists

50 Books to Read Before You Die

Tom Jones appears on the “50 Books to Read Before You Die” list. I have completed approximately 90 percent of this list and hope to finish it by the end of the year. After that, I plan to complete the Harvard Classics and make further progress on the 1,001 Books to Read Before You Die list.

(Reading lists preserved below for personal and historical record.)

Reading Projects and Lists

50 Books to Read Before You Die

Tom Jones appears on the “50 Books to Read Before You Die” list. I have completed approximately 90 percent of this list and hope to finish it by the end of the year. After that, I plan to complete the Harvard Classics and make further progress on the 1,001 Books to Read Before You Die list.

Selected Works from Ongoing Reading Lists

(Lists preserved here for personal and historical record. Formatting standardized; titles unchanged.)

Volume One (Selected)

Alcott, Little Women
Austen, Pride and Prejudice; Emma
Balzac, Father Goriot
Brontë, Jane Eyre; Wuthering Heights
Cervantes, Don Quixote
Dickens, Bleak House; Great Expectations
Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment
Eliot, Middlemarch
Fielding, Tom Jones
Flaubert, Madame Bovary
Homer, The Odyssey
Hugo, Les Misérables

Volume Two (Selected)

Austen, Sense and Sensibility
Dickens, David Copperfield; A Tale of Two Cities
Darwin, On the Origin of Species
Hardy, Tess of the d’Urbervilles
Joyce, Dubliners
Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil
Proust, Swann’s Way
Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

Volume Three (Completed; Historical Record)

Aurelius, Meditations
Machiavelli, The Prince
Plato, The Republic
Shelley, The Last Man
Twain, Life on the Mississippi
Verne, Around the World in Eighty Days
Woolf, Jacob’s Room

Harvard Classics (Selected Overview)

The Harvard Classics encompass fifty volumes spanning philosophy, literature, science, history, and religion—from Plato and Aristotle to Darwin, Dante, Shakespeare, and beyond. My goal is to complete the full set by the end of next year, alongside continued work on other canonical reading lists

Harvard Classics

 

Bolded read

 

(1) Franklin, Woolman, Penn

(2) Plato, Epictetus,

Marcus, Aurelius Meditations

(3) Bacon,

Milton’s Prose,

Thomas Browne

(4) Complete Poems in English: Milton

(5) Essays and English Traits: Emerson (

6) Poems and Songs: Burns (7)

Confessions of St. Augustine. Imitation of Christ

(8) Nine Greek Dramas (9)

Letters and Treatises of Cicero

Pliny

(10) Wealth of Nations: Adam Smith

(11) Origin of Species: Darwin

(12) Plutarch’s Lives (13)

Aeneid Virgil (14)

Don Quixote Part 1: Cervantes

(15) Pilgrim’s Progress. Donne

Herbert. Bunyan, Walton

(16) The Thousand and One Night

(17) Folk-Lore and Fable. Aesop, Grimm,

Andersen

Hans Christian Anderson’s Fairy Tales

(18) Modern English Drama

(19) Faust,

Egmont Etc.

Doctor Faustus,

Goethe,

Marlowe

(20) The Divine Comedy: Dante

(21) I Promessi

Sposi,

Manzoni

(22) The Odyssey: Homer

(23) Two Years Before Mast. Dana

(24) On the Sublime French Revolution Etc. Burke

(25) Autobiography Etc. Essays and Addresses: J.S. Mill,

1. Carlyle

(26) Continental Drama

(27) English Essays: Sidney to Macaulay

(28) Essays. English and American

(29) Voyage of the Beagle: Darwin (

30) Faraday,

Helmholtz,

Kelvin,

Newcomb,

Geikie

(31) Autobiography: Benvenuto, Cellini

(32) Literary and Philosophical Essays:

Montaigne,

Sainte Beuve,

Renan,

Lessing,

Schiller,

Kant,

Mazzini

(33) Voyages and Travels

(34) Descartes,

Voltaire,

Rousseau,

Hobbes

(35) Chronicle and Romance:

Froissart,

Malory,

Holinshed (36)

Machiavelli, the Prince

More,

Luther

(37) Locke,

Berkeley,

Hume

(38) Harvey,

Jenner,

Lister,

Pasteur

(39) Famous Prefaces

(40) English Poetry 1: Chaucer to Gray

(41) English Poetry 2: Collins to Fitzgerald

(42) English Poetry 3: Tennyson to Whitman

(43) American Historical Documents

Federalist Papers

Constitution

Bill of Rights

Declaration of Independence

(44) Sacred Writings 1

(45) Sacred Writings 2

The Bible

The Quaran

The Analects of Confucius

Mencius

Buddhist Writing

Bhaga Vita

Lao Tzo The Tao

(46) Elizabethian Drama 1

(47) Elizabethian Drama 2

(48) Thoughts and Minor Works: Pascal

(49) Epic and Saga (

50) Introduction, Readers Guide,

 

Endnotes

1. Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Henry Fielding.” https://www.britannica.com/biography/Henry-Fielding [mynbc5.com]
2. Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Henry Fielding (summary).” https://www.britannica.com/summary/Henry-Fielding [cnbc.com]
3. Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Henry Fielding: Last years.” https://www.britannica.com/biography/Henry-Fielding/Last-years [usmint.gov]
4. Wikipedia, “The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_History_of_Tom_Jones,_a_Foundling [congress.gov]
5. LitCharts, “The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling — Quotes.” https://www.litcharts.com/lit/the-history-of-tom-jones-a-foundling/quotes [britannica.com]
6. Goodreads, “The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling — Quotes.” https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/1350343-the-history-of-tom-jones-a-foundling [encyclopedia.com]
7. Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Protectorate (English government).” https://www.britannica.com/topic/Protectorate-English-government [englishlit…ature.info]
8. Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Restoration (English history, 1660).” https://www.britannica.com/topic/Restoration-English-history-1660 [govmint.com]
9. LitCharts, “The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling — Introduction and Context.” https://www.litcharts.com/lit/the-history-of-tom-jones-a-foundling [nasb.com]
10. Project Gutenberg, “The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling.” https://www.gutenberg.org/files/6593/6593-h/6593-h.htm [britannica.com]

 

#classics

March 21, 2026, 2:33 am 0 boosts 0 favorites

Comment:  I received a review of my review on writing com. See at the end of the article. I will update if I get any other comments and would appreciate hearing from you my dear readers. What do you think? Have you read Tom Jones yet?  End Comment

As part of my long‑running goal of reading the great classic works, I finally conquered Tom Jones. I use the word conquered deliberately. For me, this sprawling eighteenth‑century novel was a challenge—because of its length, its constant authorial asides and observations, and, as is typical of novels from that period, its heavy use of classical allusions. Many of those references are obscure, and some of the attitudes—racism, sexism, and other “isms”—are jarring to modern readers.

There is also, to use a modern cliché, too much telling and not enough showing. Like many classic books, Tom Jones is easier to read in a Kindle or electronic edition, where historical references and antiquated vocabulary can be quickly looked up.

Despite these challenges, the novel is also surprisingly modern in some of its concerns. In certain respects, Tom Jones can be read as a proto‑feminist novel. It argues that women should be free to choose whether—and whom—they marry, and that parents should not coerce their children into unwanted matches. Fielding also criticizes the widespread anti‑Irish prejudice of his time, an element that feels more pointed and deliberate than many readers might expect.

In short, Tom Jones would probably be unpublishable by today’s commercial standards. Yet, despite its excesses and frustrations, it was ultimately worth the effort.

Literary Reputation: Why Tom Jones Still Matters

Even readers who struggle with Tom Jones rarely dispute its importance. Alongside Samuel Richardson, Henry Fielding is widely regarded as a founder of the English novel, and Tom Jones is consistently treated as his most accomplished and influential work. The novel helped demonstrate that prose fiction could combine a complex plot, a broad social canvas, and sustained moral inquiry without sacrificing humor or narrative energy. [mynbc5.com], [cnbc.com]

Critics have long admired the book’s structure. Samuel Taylor Coleridge famously claimed that Tom Jones possessed one of the “three most perfect plots ever planned,” praising its architectural balance despite its apparent sprawl. The novel’s eighteen books are carefully arranged, with mirrored episodes and thematic symmetries that reward attentive reading. [congress.gov]

Britannica emphasizes the same point, noting Fielding’s “great comic gusto,” his vast gallery of characters, and his vivid depiction of both high and low life across England. What distinguishes Tom Jones from many earlier narratives is not just its scale, but the author’s conscious control of that scale. Fielding’s prefatory chapters—placed at the beginning of each Book—are effectively miniature essays on storytelling, morality, and human nature. [usmint.gov]

From the opening pages, Fielding signals that this will be a self-aware performance. One of the novel’s best‑known passages compares the author to an innkeeper rather than a private host:

“An author ought to consider himself, not as a gentleman who gives a private or eleemosynary treat, but rather as one who keeps a public ordinary, at which all persons are welcome for their money.” [britannica.com]

Elsewhere, he unapologetically defends his habit of digression, anticipating many modern reader complaints before they arise:

“Reader, I think proper… to acquaint thee that I intend to digress, through this whole history, as often as I see occasion…” [encyclopedia.com]

And amid the satire, Fielding can still land a line of genuine moral force:

“No one hath seen beauty in its highest lustre who hath never seen it in distress.” [encyclopedia.com]

The result is a novel that is exuberant, intrusive, and opinionated—but also remarkably confident about what it is doing and why.

Henry Fielding: A Brief Biography

Henry Fielding (1707–1754) lived a life that helps explain the unusual blend of comedy, satire, and moral seriousness in Tom Jones. Born in Somerset and educated at Eton, he developed a strong grounding in classical literature that later shaped the novel’s mock‑epic tone and allusive style. [mynbc5.com]

Fielding initially made his reputation as a playwright and political satirist. His theatrical career was marked by sharp attacks on corruption and hypocrisy, which eventually drew the ire of the government and contributed to restrictions on the stage. He later turned to the law, becoming a magistrate and playing a significant role in the reform of urban justice. Britannica credits him with helping establish a new approach to law enforcement in London, experience that darkened and deepened his later fiction. [cnbc.com]

His major novels—Shamela (1741), Joseph Andrews (1742), Tom Jones (1749), and Amelia (1751)—helped transform the novel into a planned, socially observant form capable of surveying contemporary life in all its contradictions. Fielding died in 1754 in Lisbon, where he had traveled in search of relief from chronic illness. [mynbc5.com], [cnbc.com]

Cromwell, the Interregnum, and the Restoration: A Necessary Backdrop

Although Tom Jones is firmly an eighteenth‑century novel, it unfolds in a society still shaped by the political and religious upheavals of the previous century. Understanding that background helps clarify many of the book’s assumptions about authority, morality, and social order.

After the execution of King Charles I in 1649, England entered a period without a monarch known as the Interregnum. During these years, the country experimented with various republican forms of government, culminating in Oliver Cromwell’s rule as Lord Protector. This period was marked by political instability, religious tension, and widespread resentment of military and Puritan authority. [en.wikipedia.org], [englishlit…ature.info]

In 1660, the monarchy was restored with the return of Charles II. The Restoration re‑established Anglican orthodoxy and revived cultural life, including drama and literature. Yet it did not erase the memory of civil war, regicide, and republican rule. Those memories lingered for generations and continued to shape English attitudes toward power, class, and religion. [govmint.com]

Fielding’s world is downstream of these events. Even when Tom Jones focuses on romance, inheritance, and personal virtue, it does so against a backdrop of inherited anxieties about legitimacy, authority, and social stability. Modern studies of the novel note that it also contains references to the Jacobite rising of 1745, itself a later aftershock of the long Stuart succession crisis. [nasb.com]

Presentism: Reading the Past Without Flattening It

One of the most interesting questions that arose while reading Tom Jones is how much older works should be judged by modern standards. Bill Maher often refers to this issue as presentism: the tendency to impose contemporary moral values on historical texts. The term originates in historiography, but it applies neatly to literature as well.

Maher’s commentary echoes critics such as Lionel Trilling and Harold Bloom, who argued that literature must be understood in its historical context. When we read Tom Jones solely through the lens of modern gender politics or class consciousness, we risk missing the novel’s innovations, its humor, and its critique of the society it depicts.

This does not mean ignoring the book’s problematic elements. Rather, it means holding two truths at once: the novel reflects its era, and it also transcends it. Sophia Western may not conform to modern feminist ideals, but within her historical context she exhibits agency, moral clarity, and resistance to patriarchal control. Fielding’s satire of hypocrisy and class pretension remains sharp even today.

Presentism tends to flatten a work into a moral checklist. Reading historically allows us to experience the novel as a conversation across time, rather than as a relic to be judged and discarded.

Closing Thoughts

Tom Jones is messy, funny, humane, and occasionally exhausting. It is a novel that helped invent the modern form, and reading it today requires both patience and perspective. When we resist presentism and allow the book to speak in its own voice, we discover a work that still has something meaningful to say about love, virtue, hypocrisy, and the unpredictable turns of life.

Reading Projects and Lists

50 Books to Read Before You Die

Tom Jones appears on the “50 Books to Read Before You Die” list. I have completed approximately 90 percent of this list and hope to finish it by the end of the year. After that, I plan to complete the Harvard Classics and make further progress on the 1,001 Books to Read Before You Die list.

(Reading lists preserved below for personal and historical record.)

Reading Projects and Lists

50 Books to Read Before You Die

Tom Jones appears on the “50 Books to Read Before You Die” list. I have completed approximately 90 percent of this list and hope to finish it by the end of the year. After that, I plan to complete the Harvard Classics and make further progress on the 1,001 Books to Read Before You Die list.

Selected Works from Ongoing Reading Lists

(Lists preserved here for personal and historical record. Formatting standardized; titles unchanged.)

Volume One (Selected)

Alcott, Little Women
Austen, Pride and Prejudice; Emma
Balzac, Father Goriot
Brontë, Jane Eyre; Wuthering Heights
Cervantes, Don Quixote
Dickens, Bleak House; Great Expectations
Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment
Eliot, Middlemarch
Fielding, Tom Jones
Flaubert, Madame Bovary
Homer, The Odyssey
Hugo, Les Misérables

Volume Two (Selected)

Austen, Sense and Sensibility
Dickens, David Copperfield; A Tale of Two Cities
Darwin, On the Origin of Species
Hardy, Tess of the d’Urbervilles
Joyce, Dubliners
Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil
Proust, Swann’s Way
Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

Volume Three (Completed; Historical Record)

Aurelius, Meditations
Machiavelli, The Prince
Plato, The Republic
Shelley, The Last Man
Twain, Life on the Mississippi
Verne, Around the World in Eighty Days
Woolf, Jacob’s Room

Harvard Classics (Selected Overview)

The Harvard Classics encompass fifty volumes spanning philosophy, literature, science, history, and religion—from Plato and Aristotle to Darwin, Dante, Shakespeare, and beyond. My goal is to complete the full set by the end of next year, alongside continued work on other canonical reading lists

Harvard Classics

Bolded read

(1) Franklin, Woolman, Penn

(2) Plato, Epictetus,

Marcus, Aurelius Meditations

(3) Bacon,

Milton’s Prose,

Thomas Browne

(4) Complete Poems in English: Milton

(5) Essays and English Traits: Emerson (

6) Poems and Songs: Burns (7)

Confessions of St. Augustine. Imitation of Christ

(8) Nine Greek Dramas (9)

Letters and Treatises of Cicero

Pliny

(10) Wealth of Nations: Adam Smith

(11) Origin of Species: Darwin

(12) Plutarch’s Lives (13)

Aeneid Virgil (14)

Don Quixote Part 1: Cervantes

(15) Pilgrim’s Progress. Donne

Herbert. Bunyan, Walton

(16) The Thousand and One Night

(17) Folk-Lore and Fable. Aesop, Grimm,

Andersen

Hans Christian Anderson’s Fairy Tales

(18) Modern English Drama

(19) Faust,

Egmont Etc.

Doctor Faustus,

Goethe,

Marlowe

(20) The Divine Comedy: Dante

(21) I Promessi

Sposi,

Manzoni

(22) The Odyssey: Homer

(23) Two Years Before Mast. Dana

(24) On the Sublime French Revolution Etc. Burke

(25) Autobiography Etc. Essays and Addresses: J.S. Mill,

1. Carlyle

(26) Continental Drama

(27) English Essays: Sidney to Macaulay

(28) Essays. English and American

(29) Voyage of the Beagle: Darwin (

30) Faraday,

Helmholtz,

Kelvin,

Newcomb,

Geikie

(31) Autobiography: Benvenuto, Cellini

(32) Literary and Philosophical Essays:

Montaigne,

Sainte Beuve,

Renan,

Lessing,

Schiller,

Kant,

Mazzini

(33) Voyages and Travels

(34) Descartes,

Voltaire,

Rousseau,

Hobbes

(35) Chronicle and Romance:

Froissart,

Malory,

Holinshed (36)

Machiavelli, the Prince

More,

Luther

(37) Locke,

Berkeley,

Hume

(38) Harvey,

Jenner,

Lister,

Pasteur

(39) Famous Prefaces

(40) English Poetry 1: Chaucer to Gray

(41) English Poetry 2: Collins to Fitzgerald

(42) English Poetry 3: Tennyson to Whitman

(43) American Historical Documents

Federalist Papers

Constitution

Bill of Rights

Declaration of Independence

(44) Sacred Writings 1

(45) Sacred Writings 2

The Bible

The Quaran

The Analects of Confucius

Mencius

Buddhist Writing

Bhaga Vita

Lao Tzo The Tao

(46) Elizabethian Drama 1

(47) Elizabethian Drama 2

(48) Thoughts and Minor Works: Pascal

(49) Epic and Saga (

50) Introduction, Readers Guide,

has reviewed “Book Reviews”  | Edit | fs I read #14. Review of Tom Jones ID #1111265 entered on March 22, 2026 at 6:13pm First, I want to congratulate you on your reading commitment. I have to admit I have not read Tom Jones, but I truly admire the list of books you are working through. I especially enjoy seeing your book reports—they reflect both dedication and thoughtful engagement. There is not much for me to critique here, as your work is well organized and clearly presented. You handled this review with clarity and care, and it shows. When I was a young mother, I wanted to encourage my daughter to read the classics, since her high school was not assigning many of them. We decided to read several together, and it became something special for our family. My husband had already read most of the ones she chose, so it gave us all something to talk about. Even now, she will still find a book she enjoys and ask me to read it so we can share our thoughts on the story, the writer, and what we liked or didn’t like. My husband does not always join us anymore, but every now and then he still takes part. Well done—I applaud your effort and consistency. Kind wishes, Tee

Endnotes

1. Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Henry Fielding.” https://www.britannica.com/biography/Henry-Fielding [mynbc5.com]
2. Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Henry Fielding (summary).” https://www.britannica.com/summary/Henry-Fielding [cnbc.com]
3. Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Henry Fielding: Last years.” https://www.britannica.com/biography/Henry-Fielding/Last-years [usmint.gov]
4. Wikipedia, “The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_History_of_Tom_Jones,_a_Foundling [congress.gov]
5. LitCharts, “The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling — Quotes.” https://www.litcharts.com/lit/the-history-of-tom-jones-a-foundling/quotes [britannica.com]
6. Goodreads, “The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling — Quotes.” https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/1350343-the-history-of-tom-jones-a-foundling [encyclopedia.com]
7. Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Protectorate (English government).” https://www.britannica.com/topic/Protectorate-English-government [englishlit…ature.info]
8. Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Restoration (English history, 1660).” https://www.britannica.com/topic/Restoration-English-history-1660 [govmint.com]
9. LitCharts, “The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling — Introduction and Context.” https://www.litcharts.com/lit/the-history-of-tom-jones-a-foundling [nasb.com]
10. Project Gutenberg, “The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling.” https://www.gutenberg.org/files/6593/6593-h/6593-h.htm [britannica.com]

#classics