Tom Jones: A Norton Critical Edition / Edition 2

by Henry Fielding, Sheridan Baker

Overview

The Second Edition of this Norton Critical Edition of Fielding’s great novel reprints the definitive fourth edition text (1749, dated 1750), "Carefully revis’d and corrected/By Henry Fielding, Esq;", the last in his lifetime.

The novel is fully annotated for undergraduate readers and is accompanied by a Textual Appendix and a map depicting Tom’s route to London.

As in the previous edition, "Contemporary Reactions" by such noteworthy commentators as Samuel Richardson, Samuel Johnson, and the Hill sisters provide rich historical context.

"Criticism" is a collection of fourteen interpretations of the novel spanning the years 1826–1990 by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Forsyth, Kenneth Rexroth, R. S. Crane, John Preston, William Empson, Wayne C. Booth, Martin Battestin, Maaja A. Stewart, Eleanor N. Hutchens, Sean Shesgreen, Frederick W. Hilles, and Sheridan Baker.

A new Chronology and an updated Selected Bibliography are also included.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393965940
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	11/17/1994
Series:	Norton Critical Editions Series
Edition description:	Second Edition
Pages:	816
Product dimensions:	5.70(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Sheridan Baker is Professor Emeritus of English Language and Literature at the University of Michigan. He is the author of many works, including The Harper Handbook to Literature, Ernest Hemingway: An Introduction and Interpretation, The Complete Stylist, The Essayist, and The Practical Stylist. He is co-author of The Written Word and The Practical Imagination. He is currently at work on two volumes for the Wesleyan University Press’s Works of Fielding.

What People are Saying About This

George Sherburn

Not the serious moral intention of the author, nor even the superb fusion of all elements, can fully account for the pleasure intelligent readers have found for two hundred years in reading Tom Jones. One must recognize as a supreme aid to the success of the book the fact that it is composed with confident directness and precision, and especially that it is written in healthy high spirits—that Fielding keenly enjoyed writing it.

Edward Gibbon

The successors of Charles the Fifth may disdain their brethren of England; but the romance of Tom Jones, that exquisite picture of human manners, will outlive the palace of the Escurial and the imperial eagle of the house of Austria.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Upon my word, I think Tom Jones is one of the most perfect plots ever planned.