The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling

$5,000 · Offered by Book Collector Inc

Author: Henry Fielding (1707-1754) Year: 1749 Publisher: Printed for Andrew Millar Place: London Description: Six volumes. lxiii+[blank]+214 pages; [2 blank]+title=blank=324+[2 blank] pages; [2 blank]+title+[blank]+370+[2 blank] pages; [2 blank]+title+[blank]+312+[2 blank] pages; [2 blank]+title+[blank]+294+[2 blank] pages; [4 blank]+title+[blank]+304+[4 blank] pages. Duodecimo (6 3/4" x 4")bound in full uniform contemporary calf with five raised spine bands with gilt numbering to spine and gilt edges to covers. (ESTC T1947; Grolier English 48; Rothschild 850) First edition, first issue. The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, often known simply as Tom Jones , is a comic novel by English playwright and novelist Henry Fielding. It is a Bildungsroman and a picaresque novel. It was first published on 28 February 1749 in London and is among the earliest English works to be classified as a novel. The novel is highly organized despite its length. Samuel Taylor Coleridge argued that it has one of the "three most perfect plots ever planned", alongside Oedipus Tyrannus and The Alchemist . It became a best seller with four editions published in its first year alone. It is generally regarded as Fielding's greatest book and as an influential English novel. Fielding presents a panorama of contemporary British life, drawing characters from many different classes and occupations. But Ian Watt argues in The Rise of the Novel that Fielding did not aim at the "realism of presentation" of lifeli

• Binding: Hardcover

Found via Rare Books Intel, a search across rare-book dealers, auction houses and marketplaces worldwide.