A Political Biography of Henry Fielding

Best known today as the author of three seminal novels, Joseph Andrews, Tom Jones and Amelia, Henry Fielding (1707-1754) was the most successful playwright of his day until Walpole put an end to politics on the stage by passing the theatrical Licensing Act of 1737 - 'the greatest dramatist, with the single exception of Shakespeare, produced by England between the Middle Ages and the nineteenth century', according to George Bernard Shaw. Turning to political journalism, Fielding wrote the lead essays for periodicals such as The Champion (1739-1741), The True Patriot (1745-1746) and The Jacobite's Journal (1747-1748), as well as swingeing political satire in prose and verse. Although scholars agree that Fielding subscribed to Revolution Principles, existing accounts of his political ideas are insufficiently aware not only of the structure of politics in the first half of the eighteenth century, but of the ways in which the various strands of Whig political ideology developed during the sixty years following the Revolution of 1688. This political biography explains and illustrates what 'being a Whig' meant to Fielding.