Amelia [Hardcover]

Henry Fielding (Author), George Saintsbury (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1, 2003

". . . More delicately faithful and true are Colonel James and his wife. They are both very good sort of people in a way, who live in a lax and frivolous age, who have plenty of money, no particular principle, no strong affection for each other, and little individual character. They might have been -- Mrs. James to some extent is -- quite estimable and harmless; but even as it is, they are not to be wholly ill spoken of. Being what they are, Fielding has taken them, and, with a relentlessness which Swift could hardly have exceeded, and a good nature which Swift rarely or never attained, has held them up to us as dissected preparations of half-innocent meanness, scoundrelism, and vanity, such as are hardly anywhere else to be found. I have used the word 'preparations,' and it in part indicates Fielding's virtue, a virtue shown, I think, in this book as much as anywhere. But it does not fully indicate it; for the preparation, wet or dry, is a dead thing, and a museum is but a mortuary. Fielding's men and women, once more let it be said, are all alive. The palace of his work is the hall, not of Eblis, but of a quite beneficent enchanter, who puts burning hearts into his subjects, not to torture them, but only that they may light up for us their whole organization and being. They are not in the least the worse for it, and we are infinitely the better." -- From editor George Saintsbury's Introduction

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Henry Fielding called Amelia his 'favourite Child' but the readers who loved Tom Jones, on the lookout for more jokes from this author, found the child unfunny and refused to take her in. Linda Bree's new edition of the novel creates an important opening for fresh appraisal of this innovative and challenging work. It is generously and lucidly annotated, with a discriminating introduction taking balanced account both of the historical context and most recent critical discourse. A superb addition to our resources for the study of the early modern novel as well as of Fielding." Thomas Lockwood, University of Washington "Amelia, Fielding's last and in some ways greatest novel, gives us marriage as epic adventure, fraught with perils and blessed with pleasures, and Linda Bree thankfully gives us a new and authoritative edition. The text is well edited and annotated, Bree's introduction superb, and the maps, glossary, and appendices all very useful." Adam Potkay, William R. Kenan Professor of Humanities, The College of William & Mary --Adam Potkay, William R. Kenan Professor of Humanities, The College of William & Mary --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

From the Back Cover

With its combination of satire and sentiment, its focus on the seedy side of London life, and its unexpected shifts in tone, Amelia has intrigued and disturbed readers since its first publication. Eagerly awaited by Henry Fielding's eighteenth-century readers of Tom Jones, the novel perplexed many of them. Amelia counters the traditional courtship plot of eighteenth-century novels with its convincing portrayal of a marriage between an errant husband and his wife, and is ahead of its time in its depiction of the alienation of modern city life. Appendices include contemporary criticism and related works by Alexander Pope and Sarah Fielding. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 552 pages
• Publisher: Wildside Press (March 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1592246923
• ISBN-13: 978-1592246922
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,739,449 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Amelia, September 3, 2011

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This review is from: Amelia (Broadview Editions) (Paperback)

Excellent example of fiction writing a couple of centuries ago, This particular edition has extensive scholarly footnotes about anything that might be confusing to the reader.