i'm sure there is more value to this than i am finding, but man this was a slog. certainly there were parts that were much more readable than the majority, and thematically i can't say i mind what he's doing (mostly around hypocrisy). probably i'd have appreciated it much more if i had read pamela, which apparently this is in response to.

but as it was, it was repetitive and over the top farcical, when it was actually understandable. mostly i couldn't care less what was happening or to whom. the troubles they all got into (especially parsons) was just too much. i know it wasn't supposed to be a believable story, but it went too far and i just found it annoying. i did more skimming than reading by the end. ( )

Shamela gets a solid 3.5 stars: It is quite funny--though only if you have read Pamela! Otherwise many of the jokes will not work. Unfortunately, Shamela is only about 50 pages.

Joseph Andrews gets 2 stars: It certainly has its moments. I found parts 1, 3, and 4, to be the strongest. Part 2, though, I found to be long and tiringäóÎand I did not like the character of Parson Adams, even if he was meant to represent someone or a certain sort of Parson. Again, it help to have read Pamela (as Joseph Andrews is meant to be her brother), though a recent reading of Don Quixote would also help (I read it decades ago).

As with many of these 18th century novels, footnotes are needed to understand the many references to events, laws, and people that are referenced or represented. It makes the story a bit hard to follow and hard to fully comprehendäóÎeven though it might have been quite funny to those reading it when it was written. ( )

An Apology for the Life of Mrs. Shamela Andrews:

This got a proper laugh out of me. There's no point reading it unless you've read Pamela - which I urge you to do as you're in for a treat. It's also worth reading the introduction to the 2nd edition as you'll get more of the jokes.
The humour here depends on the idea that Pamela is not as she presents herself in her letters but is in fact the saucy slut Mr B accuses her of being - an idea that I must admit I suspected when I first began reading the novel.

The History of the Adventures of Joseph Andrews, and of His Friend Mr. Abraham Adams:

This novel can be read on it's own but you'll get more out of it if you've read Pamela. If you intend to read Pamela then you should definitely read that first as this gives away an important plot point.

It has many parallels with it's progenitor as everything in it has a counterpart or opposite: high vs low class, innocence & guilt, appearance vs reality, hypocrisy and truth.

And let's not forget that it's just tremendous fun!

I read Tom Jones last year and wish now that I'd read this first. It shares so much with the later novel: a journey, a handsome hero with a love interest, comic sidekick and money worries; secret family histories; guilt & innocence; hypocrisy. It's like a dry run for the later novel. Perhaps he thought no-one had read this so could recycle much of it. Not that I'm complaining. I enjoyed the relative tightness of this novel even if the rambling scope of Tom Jones is technically, well, more classic.

Oh, and if you don't like his portrayal of Gypsies, Tom Jones has a more balanced view. ( )

A picaresque novel and as such, eminently forgettable and largely tedious. I can understand the importance of the book for the time it was written in, but unless you really enjoy “adventures” and plot elements that inevitably contrive to farce, then this isn’t for you.

It wasn’t for me.

So, why are we bothering with it at all? Well, the novel at the time Fielding wrote Joseph (1742) was a fairly predictable affair. Rules that heavily defined British society had constrained the novel within it’s own particular literary rules. Fielding was particularly upset about this and the popularity of such constrained novels by Samuel Richardson in particular.

Fielding intended to break some of the barriers of contemporary fiction and if Wikipedia is any authority to go by, he seems to have succeeded. But, never lacking historical irony, the success of trail-blazing mould-breakers only inspires others to form new moulds of their own.

In particular, Fielding inspired Smollet and Peregrine Pickle is, to my mind, a much more engaging piece of work than Joseph Andrews. If you were looking for an 18th century picaresque novel to while away some time, I’d recommend you bypass Joseph’s outstretched hand of friendship and hit the open road with Peregrine. ( )

I quite enjoyed these, Fielding is good at parody and is much the best of the 18thC novelists. ( )