It is now almost two hundred years since Henry Fielding developed in Tom Jones a new approach and a new field for the novel. Treasured as one of the greatest achievements in the literature of fiction, it retains all the vitality and contemporaneity of the eternally human. Its unrestrained commentaries on the life of the period, its ridicule of the pretensions and its tolerance of the frailties of mankind, its naturalness and its unforgettable characters, assure the permanence of Tom Jones through the ages.