Tom Jones
by Henry Fielding
1749
For a 900-page novel, Tom Jones’s famously well-made plot can be summarized briefly. The titular hero is a foundling raised in the ideal country estate of the benevolent Mr. Allworthy. There Tom’s natural goodness and high spirits are checked by several challenges: the rival but empty ideologies of his two flawed tutors, the brutal cleric Thwackum and the dry philosopher Square; the enmity of his scheming cousin Blifil; and eventually his own immoderacy or imprudence, when he impregnates Molly Seagrim, daughter of his dissolute servant-friend, Black George. In the midst of these adventures, he falls gradually in love with the daughter of the neighboring estate, the auroral Sophia Western, whose drunken, vulgar, alcoholic, hunting-obsessed Tory father and arrogant, cosmopolitan, semi-learned, cynical Whig aunt will unfortunately never let her marry a bastard foundling and instead wish to wed her to the odious Blifil.