Henry Fielding

Author Code: EHFX

Educated at Eton and Leyden, where he studied law, Fielding wote plays to support himself in his early days. He was called to the bar in 1740, but his interests lay in writing and in 1743, he published Miscellanies, which included Jonathan Wild the Great and A Journey From This World to the Next. He became a justice of the peace at Westminster, but continued to concentrate on writing and in 1749 published his masterpiece, The History of Tom Jones, A Foundling. He founded the Covent Garden Journal in 1752 and published many essays for that magazine under the pseudonym Sir Alexander Drawcansir. He went to Portugal in 1754 due to ill health and died in Lisbon. His journal of that journey was published posthumously.