Which British novelist wrote 'The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling'?

Henry Fielding wrote ‘The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling.’ The comic novel was first published in London in 1749 and is often shortened to ‘Tom Jones.’

Fielding was already known as a playwright and satirist when he turned to prose fiction. The novel follows Tom Jones, an amiable young man whose uncertain birth, romantic adventures, and clashes with social expectations drive the plot. Its story combines elements of the comic novel, the Bildungsroman, and the picaresque tradition.

One of Fielding’s distinctive techniques is his highly visible narrator. Each of the novel’s 18 books begins with a prefatory chapter that addresses the reader and comments on storytelling, morality, or literary convention. This makes the book feel unusually self-aware for an eighteenth-century novel.

The title’s reference to a ‘foundling’ points to the mystery surrounding Tom’s origins, which is eventually resolved. Readers sometimes confuse Fielding with Samuel Richardson, another major eighteenth-century novelist. Richardson wrote ‘Pamela’ and ‘Clarissa’; Fielding’s ‘Tom Jones’ was partly shaped by his comic response to the moral seriousness of Richardson’s fiction.