Tom Jones is generally regarded as Fielding's greatest book, and as a very influential English novel. The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, often known simply as Tom Jones, is a comic novel by the English playwright and novelist Henry Fielding. The novel is both a Bildungsroman and a picaresque novel. First published on 28 February 1749 in London, Tom Jones is among the earliest English prose works describable as a novel, and is the earliest novel mentioned by W. Somerset Maugham in his 1948 book Great Novelists and Their Novels among the ten best novels of the world. Though lengthy, the...

Henry Fieldings novel (which started out as a skit on Richardsons Pamela),
recounting the adventures and misadventures of the handsome footman
and the simple, loveable parson, is dramatized for a simple-to-stage production,
requiring a minimum of props and settings. Robbers, grasping
innkeepers, love, jealousy, female rivalry, personal misunderstandings, surprise
revelations of unexpected relationships - all find their places in the
exuberant story. Period - about 1740.