Tom Jones: by FIELDING, Henry - 1809 A Foundling. To which is prefixed, the life of the author.

London: S. Hamilton, J. Walker [& 20 others in London],, 1809. An attractively bound set of Fielding's masterpiece and one of the great novels of the 18th century, which alongside Joseph Andrews "established the tradition of the comic novel in English" (ODNB). It was first published in 1749. An experimental writer who thoroughly ruffled the feathers of his contemporary literary establishment, Fielding is now "generally agreed to be an innovating master of the highest originality. He himself believed he was 'the founder of a new province of writing'... In breaking away from the epistolary method of his contemporary Richardson, and others, he devised what he described as 'comic epics in prose', which may be characterized as the first modern novels in English, leading straight to the works of Dickens and Thackeray" (Drabble, p. 360). 2 volumes, duodecimo (131 x 71 mm). Contemporary diced calf, smooth spines lettered in gilt, compartments and edges tooled in gilt, marbled edges and endpapers. Engraved frontispieces and title pages. Ownership inscription of one G. Ackers, dated 1819, to half-titles: likely George Ackers (1788-1836) of Moreton Hall, Cheshire. A little rubbing to extremities, faint foxing to a few leaves, else clean. A very good copy. Margaret Drabble, ed., The Oxford Companion To English Literature, 6th edn, 2000.