Tom Jones isn't a bad guy, but boys just want to have fun. Nearly two and a half centuries after its publication, the adventures of the rambunctious and randy Tom Jones still makes for great reading. I'm not in the habit of using words like bawdy or rollicking, but if you look them up in the dictionary, you should see a picture of this book.


From School Library Journal
Grade 9 Up-A full caste dramatization brings to life this romp through 18th century England.Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From AudioFile
Second only to the language of Shakespeare, the English language of the eighteenth century possesses delightful sonorities, lusty vigor and incredible expressive power--qualities to which Fielding adds rich characterization, intriguing plot twists, delicious bawdiness and satiric humor. In an unaffected Midlands accent, John Sessions gives us a rich, virile, fully voiced interpretation that the author himself would chuckle through. So expressive is he that all the antiquated turns of phrase sound as contemporary as this morning. Moreover, he has fun with the text, giving his imagination full sway, especially in his delivery of dialogue, without ever letting it clash or overwhelm the material. Even this reviewer, who has read the book, seen the film, watched the recent TV serialization, and auditioned two other audiobook versions, found this abridgment fresh and delightful. Y.R. An AUDIOFILE Earphones Award winner (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine


Audiofile, Oct/Nov. 1998
Winner of the Earphones Award. Second only to the language of Shakespeare, the English language of the eighteenth century possesses delightful sonorities, lusty vigor and incredible expressive powerqualities to which Fielding adds rich characterization, intriguing plot twists, delicious bawdiness and satiric humor. In an unaffected Midlands accent, John Sessions gives us a rich, virile, fully voiced interpretation that the author himself would chuckle through. So expressive is he that all the antiquated turns of phrase sound as contemporary as this morning. Moreover, he has fun with the text, giving his imagination full sway, especially in his delivery of dialogue, without ever letting it clash or overwhelm the material. Even this reviewer, who has read the book, seen the film, watch the recent TV serialization, and auditioned two other audiobook versions, found this abridgment fresh and delightful [brought to you by HighBridge Audio].


Book Description
Tom Jones (1749) is rightly regarded as Fielding's greatest work, and one of the first and most influential of English novels. At the center of one of the most ingenious plots in English fiction stands a hero whose actions were, in 1749, as shocking as they are funny today. This carefully modernized edition is based on Fielding's emended fourth edition text and offers the most thorough Notes, Maps, and Bibliography.


The Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature
(in full The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling) Comic novel by Henry Fielding, published in 1749. Tom Jones, like its predecessor, Joseph Andrews, is constructed around a romance plot. Squire Allworthy suspects that the infant whom he adopts and names Tom Jones is the illegitimate child of his servant Jenny Jones. When Tom is a young man, he falls in love with Sophia Western, his beautiful and virtuous neighbor. In the end his true identity is revealed and he wins Sophia's hand, but numerous obstacles have to be overcome, and in the course of the action the various sets of characters pursue each other from one part of the country to another, giving Fielding an opportunity to paint an incomparably vivid picture of England in the mid-18th century.


From the Publisher
5 1/2 x 8 1/2 trim. 1 facs. Map. LC 83-10633

FROM THE PUBLISHER

One of the great comic novels in the English language, Tom Jones was an instant success when it was published in 1749: Ten thousand copies were sold in its first year. A foundling, Tom is discovered one evening by the benevolent Squire Allworthy and his sister Bridget and brought up as a son in their household until it is time for him to set out in search of both his fortune and his true identity. Amorous, high-spirited, and filled with what Fielding called "the glorious lust of doing good" but with a tendency toward dissolution, Tom Jones is one of the first characters in fiction to display legitimate sides of human virtue and vice.

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING

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. — Edward Gibbon

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