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Jonathan Wild
The real-life Jonathan Wild, gangland godfather and self-styled "Thieftaker General", controlled much of the London underworld until he was executed for his crimes in 1725. Even during his lifetime his achievements attracted attention; after his death balladeers sang of his exploits, and satirists made connections between his success and the triumph of corruption in high places. Fielding built on these narratives to produce one of the greatest sustained satires in the English language. Published in 1743, at a time when the modern novel had yet to establish itself as a fixed literary form, Jonathan Wild is at the same time a brilliant black comedy, an incisive political satire, and a profoundly serious exploration of human "greatness" and "goodness", as relevant today as it ever was.
About the For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.
About the For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.
181 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1743
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About the author
Henry Fielding
2,492 books387 followersHenry Fielding was an English dramatist, journalist and novelist. The son of an army lieutenant and a judge's daughter, he was educated at Eton School and the University of Leiden before returning to England where he wrote a series of farces, operas and light comedies.
Fielding formed his own company and was running the Little Theatre, Haymarket, when one of his satirical plays began to upset the government. The passing of the Theatrical Licensing Act in 1737 effectively ended Fielding's career as a playwright.
In 1739 Fielding turned to journalism and became editor of The Champion. He also began writing novels, including: The Adventures of Joseph Andrews (1742) and Jonathan Wild (1743).
Fielding was made a justice of the peace for Westminster and Middlesex in 1748. He campaigned against legal corruption and helped his half-brother, Sir John Fielding, establish the Bow Street Runners.
In 1749 Fielding's novel, The History of Tom Jones was published to public acclaim. Critics agree that it is one of the greatest comic novels in the English language. Fielding followed this success with another well received novel, Amelia (1751).
Fielding continued as a journalist and his satirical journal, Covent Garden, continued to upset those in power. Throughout his life, Fielding suffered from poor health and by 1752 he could not move without the help of crutches. In an attempt to overcome his health problems, Henry Fielding went to live in Portugal but this was not successful and he died in Lisbon in 1754.
Fielding formed his own company and was running the Little Theatre, Haymarket, when one of his satirical plays began to upset the government. The passing of the Theatrical Licensing Act in 1737 effectively ended Fielding's career as a playwright.
In 1739 Fielding turned to journalism and became editor of The Champion. He also began writing novels, including: The Adventures of Joseph Andrews (1742) and Jonathan Wild (1743).
Fielding was made a justice of the peace for Westminster and Middlesex in 1748. He campaigned against legal corruption and helped his half-brother, Sir John Fielding, establish the Bow Street Runners.
In 1749 Fielding's novel, The History of Tom Jones was published to public acclaim. Critics agree that it is one of the greatest comic novels in the English language. Fielding followed this success with another well received novel, Amelia (1751).
Fielding continued as a journalist and his satirical journal, Covent Garden, continued to upset those in power. Throughout his life, Fielding suffered from poor health and by 1752 he could not move without the help of crutches. In an attempt to overcome his health problems, Henry Fielding went to live in Portugal but this was not successful and he died in Lisbon in 1754.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 64 reviews
November 3, 2025
Jonathan Wild, 1683-1725.The Thief- Taker General was the most famous or infamous if you prefer, a British criminal of the 18th Century. After his demise, novelists, singers, satirists and reformers, praised and condemned his career, sounds familiar to modern people. Wild, became better know after his death, from being hung what else, then when he was alive. That's immortality for you, it never changes, publicity good or bad makes one a celebrity. Henry Fielding's (Tom Jones his best book) black comedy has little facts in it however very well written and a joy to consume. It's in reality about the corruption of British society of the 18th century, then thriving. Crooks prosper and honest folks suffer and remain desperately poor, not happy campers. Sounds familiar to us even in the 21st century. Jonathan Wild the Great , he could read and write imagine, but not particularly liking hard work, is anybody surprised . Becomes a petty thief who soon organizes the London underworld and he naturally their bold leader. Jonathan was a clever person, has his men take all the chances needed to succeed . He wisely sits on the side not partaking, in any actual thefts just directing them (not a crime at the time!). They specialize breaking into the wealthy aristocrats houses, they have the rich merchandise, yet often returning the property to the owners, for a not so small fee. Poor Jonathan's luck runs out and the inevitable ending occurs. Mr. Fielding by this novel show again what a terrific writer the gentleman was and a founding father of the English novel from his era. It is always riveting to read and I constantly marvel at his skill to educate today's audience of what the conditions were then...very bad.
March 17, 2010
I have no idea how or when I got this book. I also have no idea about why I would have bought it. I don't ever remember going through any kind of Henry Fielding mini-fascination. The only thing I can think of is that I bought it during my 'gotta get lots of mass-market classics' phase of ought-three, or maybe felt guilty about not finding anything else in a bookstore and picked this up for thirty cents so I didn't feel like I was stealing (yes, I must buy something in just about every upstate NY bookstore I go into with a couple of exceptions, because 'will they think I'm shoplifting guilt').
That all said, this book is pretty interesting. There is a satirical streak running through the novel that may have been effective in it's day, but I don't really know that much about the politics of early 18th century England, or about the time that Swift and Defoe were writing. But I do know a bit about form of the novel, and I can appreciate the malleability of the form in it's early days. At the point this was written the novel hadn't become a set literary convention yet, and Jonathan Wild shows some interesting digressions from what would become the standard form to give this at times an almost post-modern feeling, but since it's coming pre-modern, it's not post-modern, unless of course if we think of the whole pre/modern/post continuum as cyclical, and with only a trichotomy of reference points, and then there is really nothing post-modern about the novel, rather it is (a)modern, or not-modern, which makes modernity itself seem like a historical aberration that needed to be overcome, as a change to an equilibrium so to speak, that acts as a vacuum, so to speak again, that nature would abhor and thus return to it's (post)primordial state.
Shit I'm really talking out my ass here. This could have so been my PhD work though, (A-)Modernity and the Novel: A Punctured Dialectical Equilibrium. You might not believe me, but if I was a professor and I just wrote this garbage I'd have some philosophy nerd-boy ejaculating all over himself at the profundity. Being a book-nerd website reviewer it just looks like the stupid crap that it is though.
That all said, this book is pretty interesting. There is a satirical streak running through the novel that may have been effective in it's day, but I don't really know that much about the politics of early 18th century England, or about the time that Swift and Defoe were writing. But I do know a bit about form of the novel, and I can appreciate the malleability of the form in it's early days. At the point this was written the novel hadn't become a set literary convention yet, and Jonathan Wild shows some interesting digressions from what would become the standard form to give this at times an almost post-modern feeling, but since it's coming pre-modern, it's not post-modern, unless of course if we think of the whole pre/modern/post continuum as cyclical, and with only a trichotomy of reference points, and then there is really nothing post-modern about the novel, rather it is (a)modern, or not-modern, which makes modernity itself seem like a historical aberration that needed to be overcome, as a change to an equilibrium so to speak, that acts as a vacuum, so to speak again, that nature would abhor and thus return to it's (post)primordial state.
Shit I'm really talking out my ass here. This could have so been my PhD work though, (A-)Modernity and the Novel: A Punctured Dialectical Equilibrium. You might not believe me, but if I was a professor and I just wrote this garbage I'd have some philosophy nerd-boy ejaculating all over himself at the profundity. Being a book-nerd website reviewer it just looks like the stupid crap that it is though.
November 13, 2018
First included in a collection of miscellanies, this early novel is a shambling patchwork of mischievous sarcasm and rollicking happenings in the Quixote mode. The story of a folk hero—a Nucky Thompson of the 1700s—whose widely mythologised thief-taking antics are sent up with a huge lashing of mocking humour, the work has none of the hallmarks of the novel form Fielding would help invent and popularise in Tom Jones, and frenziedly veers from antic to antic and character to character to extreme narrative detriment.
May 4, 2009
Since most of my reading list for Underground London has been disastrously dull at best, I was quite taken by surprise at the wit and humor of Henry Fielding. Why haven't I read him before?
True, you may never be able to spell properly after reading this book and true, your moral sense of right and wrong might get permanently damaged. But most importantly, you will now be able to distinguish between a GREAT man and a GOOD man. They are not to be confused.
I think I enjoyed this waaaaay too much. Also, I think it could make a wonderful retelling as a modern story or as a sci-fi (don't even ask where my brain decided this but I might make it happen one day).
Cheers to all who have read this book!
True, you may never be able to spell properly after reading this book and true, your moral sense of right and wrong might get permanently damaged. But most importantly, you will now be able to distinguish between a GREAT man and a GOOD man. They are not to be confused.
I think I enjoyed this waaaaay too much. Also, I think it could make a wonderful retelling as a modern story or as a sci-fi (don't even ask where my brain decided this but I might make it happen one day).
Cheers to all who have read this book!
May 9, 2021
In the first half of the eighteenth-century, two prominent Englishmen acquired a reputation of great notoriety. One of these was Robert Walpole, the first British statesman to be called prime minister. This was not in fact an honorary title, but an insult, since it was then felt that no one politician should wield so much power. Curiously two other political terms that passed into respectable usage for many years – Whig and Tory –also began life as insulting terms that cast doubt on the honesty of those so named.
The other notorious figure was Jonathan Wild. Wild passed himself off as a great thief-catcher, and did indeed secure the arrest of many notorious criminals. However, this was only a front. In fact Wild was the criminal mastermind behind the scenes, and the men he handed up for arrest were those who had defied his control.
Jonathan Wild made a good business out of playing the (not-so) honest broker who helped the victims of robbery to get back some of their goods – for a steep price, of course. In reality, the goods had been stolen with his consent or connivance, and he was operating a racket. His luck ran out when this practice was made illegal, and he unwisely participated in a few robberies himself. Finally Wild was arrested and executed.
For the satirists of the day who hated the corrupt Robert Walpole, the potential for drawing parallels between the two disreputable leaders was irresistible. After all, wasn’t Wild only doing on a more obviously criminal level what Walpole was doing on a semi-legal level?
Not all the accounts of Wild’s life were intended as ironic attacks on Walpole, and a number of writers chose to provide their own lurid accounts of Wild’s life in order to make money. The most accurate and famous of these was by Daniel Defoe, and his account is included in the Penguin Classics edition of Fielding’s book.
Defoe’s account may have been more reliable than those of his contemporaries, but it is certainly not well-written. It includes many repetitious and redundant passages, even while Defoe regrets that he does not have more time to include the colourful details of Wild’s life in his pamphlet. I suspect the more likely reason is that Defoe had no wish to further research the career of Jonathan Wild, and contented himself with padding out the material that he already had.
While Defoe’s pamphlet is no masterpiece of great prose, it is a fascinating glimpse into the style of ‘true crime’ writing, which has not changed as much today as one might imagine. Defoe is also a contributor to another style of writing that was growing in the early eighteenth-century alongside that of those two great literary rivals, Fielding and Richardson.
Fielding and Richardson were felt to be the two pioneers of the British novel, and they certainly helped set the template for respectable English literature. Meanwhile Defoe was creating another template for the writing of English fiction in Robinson Crusoe and Moll Flanders. Defoe took Samuel Johnson’s motto that “No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money" to its logical extreme, and his writings are aimed purely at selling copy.
Defoe differed from the other two writers in a number of ways. Fielding’s writing is full of irony, satire, humour and the benefits of a full classical education on display. Defoe’s style is plain and unadorned, devoid of imagination, wit or ingenuity. This does has the advantage of making Defoe more readable to modern audiences who are not acquainted with the erudite allusions that are strewn across Fielding’s work.
However, Defoe’s style is not Richardson’s either. There is none of the psychological character exploration or over-wrought piety that characterises Richardson’s novels. True, Defoe’s account of Jonathan Wild shoehorns in a little bit of shocked moralising about his subject, but in reality this is no more than we often see in modern ‘true crime’ writings which give us the prurient details of criminal’s lives whilst expressing a hypocritical horror of the men and women whom they are glamorising.
By the time Henry Fielding came to the subject matter, Walpole was out of power, Wild had been dead for 18 years, and the comparisons between the two men were something of a cliché. This has partly diminished the power of Fielding’s subject, but there is an argument for saying that Fielding was not especially interested in either Walpole or Wild when he wrote this book.
To take the first, it is true that there are a number of oblique allusions to Walpole, not least in Fielding’s over-insistence on using the word ‘great’, an epithet applied to Walpole. However, the book contains no sustained attack on Walpole.
The next point is more surprising. The book is arguably not about Jonathan Wild either. True, it names the notorious criminal, and includes a few details that equate with those of Wild’s activities – names of Wild’s associates, a few of Wild’s practices etc. However, most of the story’s content has no actual historical basis in anything that Wild did, and is purely an invention by Fielding. For the main part it is a series of amusing and fictitious tableaux in the life of Wild, rather than a coherent narrative..
In this version of events, Wild rapidly rises to power through acts of childishly petty dishonesty, whilst simultaneously duping his friend, the innocent and kind Heartfree, whom Wild has robbed, and intends to have executed. Appropriately the last of the four Books is set almost entirely in Newgate, where Heartfree is reprieved from execution and Wild is instead arrested and executed.
What lends ‘Jonathan Wild’ its strength is that Fielding is going far beyond an attack on Robert Walpole. If anything, Fielding might be said to be satirising the whole rotten structure of political power that allows corrupt men like Walpole to ascend to the top of the greasy pole. Fielding achieves this by constant use of mock-heroic allusions throughout the book. Wild is given a rich ancestry of prominent criminals. (This is untrue, as Defoe’s account makes clear. Wild’s parents were actually honest citizens.)
Wild is compared to great political leaders at numerous points. Wild also delivers long harangues that are shot through with Fielding’s trademark display of high learning. The speeches are obviously not those that the real Wild would have been capable of delivering, and Fielding makes this clear when he includes a badly-spelled letter sent by Wild, and the supposed narrator who glorifies Wild is obliged to inform us that he has been using a good deal of artistic licence when presenting Wild’s speeches to the reader.
This mock-heroic style serves two purposes. Firstly it functions to ridicule Wild, and make us realise how tiny and pathetic his criminal manoeuvrings really are. Far from being the great man that the unreliable narrator tells us that he is, or which Wild believes himself to be, Wild is an insignificant gang leader. He believes that he is very powerful, when really he is not even in command of his own lusts.
This last point is demonstrated in a number of amusing incidents – Wild automatically picking someone’s pocket, even when knows that there is no money there, and Wild stealing the parson’s bottle-screw as he ascends the scaffold, and dying with it in his hand. The impulse to criminality is automatic and compulsive.
We also see it in Wild’s relationships with women, where he is always hopelessly duped and robbed. The woman he most desires is insistent (forcibly) on maintaining her chastity. When Wild finally marries her to satisfy his lust, he soon discovers that she has had a string of lovers, and the two of them grow to feel an instant loathing for one another. In another incident, Wild visits a prostitute and soon finds that his ill-gotten gains have been picked from his pocket by her.
The second purpose of the mock-heroic style in ‘Jonathan Wild’ is to draw parallels between Wild’s behaviour and that of people who are much more powerful than he is. When Wild is compared to Alexander and Caesar, this may sound absurd and bathetic at first glance, but Fielding is making a serious point here. The activities of those ‘great’ leaders were little more than a large-scale version of the rapacity and plunder that we see in petty criminals like Wild.
Fielding draws out the point that there is a distinction between being great and being good. Heartfree is a genuinely good man, but not a great one. Wild is a great man, or could have been in another setting, because he has the ruthlessness, audacity and immorality necessary to seize what he likes. These are the qualities that truly allow powerful men to flourish in society. It has been suggested that the socialist writer Bertolt Brecht was influenced by ‘Jonathan Wild’ and it is easy to imagine this. Fielding offers us a glimpse of a thoroughly rotten system where the criminal rises to the top.
The word ‘great’ is hence perverted to mean something else here, and this is a common strand in a book where other words are similarly misapplied – honour, honesty etc. Language can be misapplied to justify anything, and there are plenty of people (like the supposed narrator) who can be duped into admiring and respecting the least worthy members of society. This can be seen in all the people who courted Walpole’s favour, and those who deceived themselves about Wild’s honesty.
‘Jonathan Wild’ is not without its weaknesses. The sustained irony and unsubtle labouring over some points can be wearying, and Fielding’s high-flown style is likely to slow the reader down at times. This may explain why some of Fielding’s writings get comparatively low scorings on Goodreads, in spite of Fielding’s importance as a writer.
There are however a number of amusing scenes, and thought-provoking ideas in ‘Jonathan Wild’ that take this work to a level far higher than that of yet another Wild/Walpole satire.
The other notorious figure was Jonathan Wild. Wild passed himself off as a great thief-catcher, and did indeed secure the arrest of many notorious criminals. However, this was only a front. In fact Wild was the criminal mastermind behind the scenes, and the men he handed up for arrest were those who had defied his control.
Jonathan Wild made a good business out of playing the (not-so) honest broker who helped the victims of robbery to get back some of their goods – for a steep price, of course. In reality, the goods had been stolen with his consent or connivance, and he was operating a racket. His luck ran out when this practice was made illegal, and he unwisely participated in a few robberies himself. Finally Wild was arrested and executed.
For the satirists of the day who hated the corrupt Robert Walpole, the potential for drawing parallels between the two disreputable leaders was irresistible. After all, wasn’t Wild only doing on a more obviously criminal level what Walpole was doing on a semi-legal level?
Not all the accounts of Wild’s life were intended as ironic attacks on Walpole, and a number of writers chose to provide their own lurid accounts of Wild’s life in order to make money. The most accurate and famous of these was by Daniel Defoe, and his account is included in the Penguin Classics edition of Fielding’s book.
Defoe’s account may have been more reliable than those of his contemporaries, but it is certainly not well-written. It includes many repetitious and redundant passages, even while Defoe regrets that he does not have more time to include the colourful details of Wild’s life in his pamphlet. I suspect the more likely reason is that Defoe had no wish to further research the career of Jonathan Wild, and contented himself with padding out the material that he already had.
While Defoe’s pamphlet is no masterpiece of great prose, it is a fascinating glimpse into the style of ‘true crime’ writing, which has not changed as much today as one might imagine. Defoe is also a contributor to another style of writing that was growing in the early eighteenth-century alongside that of those two great literary rivals, Fielding and Richardson.
Fielding and Richardson were felt to be the two pioneers of the British novel, and they certainly helped set the template for respectable English literature. Meanwhile Defoe was creating another template for the writing of English fiction in Robinson Crusoe and Moll Flanders. Defoe took Samuel Johnson’s motto that “No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money" to its logical extreme, and his writings are aimed purely at selling copy.
Defoe differed from the other two writers in a number of ways. Fielding’s writing is full of irony, satire, humour and the benefits of a full classical education on display. Defoe’s style is plain and unadorned, devoid of imagination, wit or ingenuity. This does has the advantage of making Defoe more readable to modern audiences who are not acquainted with the erudite allusions that are strewn across Fielding’s work.
However, Defoe’s style is not Richardson’s either. There is none of the psychological character exploration or over-wrought piety that characterises Richardson’s novels. True, Defoe’s account of Jonathan Wild shoehorns in a little bit of shocked moralising about his subject, but in reality this is no more than we often see in modern ‘true crime’ writings which give us the prurient details of criminal’s lives whilst expressing a hypocritical horror of the men and women whom they are glamorising.
By the time Henry Fielding came to the subject matter, Walpole was out of power, Wild had been dead for 18 years, and the comparisons between the two men were something of a cliché. This has partly diminished the power of Fielding’s subject, but there is an argument for saying that Fielding was not especially interested in either Walpole or Wild when he wrote this book.
To take the first, it is true that there are a number of oblique allusions to Walpole, not least in Fielding’s over-insistence on using the word ‘great’, an epithet applied to Walpole. However, the book contains no sustained attack on Walpole.
The next point is more surprising. The book is arguably not about Jonathan Wild either. True, it names the notorious criminal, and includes a few details that equate with those of Wild’s activities – names of Wild’s associates, a few of Wild’s practices etc. However, most of the story’s content has no actual historical basis in anything that Wild did, and is purely an invention by Fielding. For the main part it is a series of amusing and fictitious tableaux in the life of Wild, rather than a coherent narrative..
In this version of events, Wild rapidly rises to power through acts of childishly petty dishonesty, whilst simultaneously duping his friend, the innocent and kind Heartfree, whom Wild has robbed, and intends to have executed. Appropriately the last of the four Books is set almost entirely in Newgate, where Heartfree is reprieved from execution and Wild is instead arrested and executed.
What lends ‘Jonathan Wild’ its strength is that Fielding is going far beyond an attack on Robert Walpole. If anything, Fielding might be said to be satirising the whole rotten structure of political power that allows corrupt men like Walpole to ascend to the top of the greasy pole. Fielding achieves this by constant use of mock-heroic allusions throughout the book. Wild is given a rich ancestry of prominent criminals. (This is untrue, as Defoe’s account makes clear. Wild’s parents were actually honest citizens.)
Wild is compared to great political leaders at numerous points. Wild also delivers long harangues that are shot through with Fielding’s trademark display of high learning. The speeches are obviously not those that the real Wild would have been capable of delivering, and Fielding makes this clear when he includes a badly-spelled letter sent by Wild, and the supposed narrator who glorifies Wild is obliged to inform us that he has been using a good deal of artistic licence when presenting Wild’s speeches to the reader.
This mock-heroic style serves two purposes. Firstly it functions to ridicule Wild, and make us realise how tiny and pathetic his criminal manoeuvrings really are. Far from being the great man that the unreliable narrator tells us that he is, or which Wild believes himself to be, Wild is an insignificant gang leader. He believes that he is very powerful, when really he is not even in command of his own lusts.
This last point is demonstrated in a number of amusing incidents – Wild automatically picking someone’s pocket, even when knows that there is no money there, and Wild stealing the parson’s bottle-screw as he ascends the scaffold, and dying with it in his hand. The impulse to criminality is automatic and compulsive.
We also see it in Wild’s relationships with women, where he is always hopelessly duped and robbed. The woman he most desires is insistent (forcibly) on maintaining her chastity. When Wild finally marries her to satisfy his lust, he soon discovers that she has had a string of lovers, and the two of them grow to feel an instant loathing for one another. In another incident, Wild visits a prostitute and soon finds that his ill-gotten gains have been picked from his pocket by her.
The second purpose of the mock-heroic style in ‘Jonathan Wild’ is to draw parallels between Wild’s behaviour and that of people who are much more powerful than he is. When Wild is compared to Alexander and Caesar, this may sound absurd and bathetic at first glance, but Fielding is making a serious point here. The activities of those ‘great’ leaders were little more than a large-scale version of the rapacity and plunder that we see in petty criminals like Wild.
Fielding draws out the point that there is a distinction between being great and being good. Heartfree is a genuinely good man, but not a great one. Wild is a great man, or could have been in another setting, because he has the ruthlessness, audacity and immorality necessary to seize what he likes. These are the qualities that truly allow powerful men to flourish in society. It has been suggested that the socialist writer Bertolt Brecht was influenced by ‘Jonathan Wild’ and it is easy to imagine this. Fielding offers us a glimpse of a thoroughly rotten system where the criminal rises to the top.
The word ‘great’ is hence perverted to mean something else here, and this is a common strand in a book where other words are similarly misapplied – honour, honesty etc. Language can be misapplied to justify anything, and there are plenty of people (like the supposed narrator) who can be duped into admiring and respecting the least worthy members of society. This can be seen in all the people who courted Walpole’s favour, and those who deceived themselves about Wild’s honesty.
‘Jonathan Wild’ is not without its weaknesses. The sustained irony and unsubtle labouring over some points can be wearying, and Fielding’s high-flown style is likely to slow the reader down at times. This may explain why some of Fielding’s writings get comparatively low scorings on Goodreads, in spite of Fielding’s importance as a writer.
There are however a number of amusing scenes, and thought-provoking ideas in ‘Jonathan Wild’ that take this work to a level far higher than that of yet another Wild/Walpole satire.
October 18, 2010
I think a lot of people would tend toward being super-cunty about the present-day value of eighteenth-century satire, but I finished this shit three hundred years later and it's still pretty damned funny. GOOD WORK, HENRY FIELDING. THANKS, EDITORS' EXPLANATORY NOTES.
January 2, 2014
Interesting as Fielding always is, funny, cutting satire and my vocabulary enriched with new cant words
May 10, 2023
"Though as a Christian though art obliged, and we advise thee, to forgive thy enemy, never trust the man who hast reason to suspect that you know he hath unjured you."
Fielding's work of the "Great" Jonathan Wild is a hilarious work of satire that takes on contemporary politics as well as hypocritical sentiments on vices and virtues. In his words, politicians are all evil but instead of battling evil, they are fighting over what "hat" everyone wears. Great subtle criticism on professional name calling and caricature-casting that still happens in politics today and distracts from the actual problems at hand. I read parts of Shamela a while ago and this is up there with that. I find Fielding's satire a lot more enjoyable than his contemporaries, like Pope.
My favourite passage, besides the one I cited above, has to be the part where Fielding says his hero is not fortunate enough to have any extraordinary sea creatures rescue him from drowning, as they do not seem to readily surface for Fielding as they seem to do for historians and poets. Good fun, I might pick up Shamela in the future to read it in its entirety.
Fielding's work of the "Great" Jonathan Wild is a hilarious work of satire that takes on contemporary politics as well as hypocritical sentiments on vices and virtues. In his words, politicians are all evil but instead of battling evil, they are fighting over what "hat" everyone wears. Great subtle criticism on professional name calling and caricature-casting that still happens in politics today and distracts from the actual problems at hand. I read parts of Shamela a while ago and this is up there with that. I find Fielding's satire a lot more enjoyable than his contemporaries, like Pope.
My favourite passage, besides the one I cited above, has to be the part where Fielding says his hero is not fortunate enough to have any extraordinary sea creatures rescue him from drowning, as they do not seem to readily surface for Fielding as they seem to do for historians and poets. Good fun, I might pick up Shamela in the future to read it in its entirety.
May 9, 2023
This one is just really all over the place, isn’t it? I always love a good satire and found this surprisingly funny. The characters aren’t exactly fleshed-out, but their flatness enhances the satire in quite a convincing way. I struggled with the writing a little, as I found it quite dense and at times incredibly vague. The different genres employed (true crime, dialogue, travel narrative etc) work well, but the shifts can be a bit jarring. This led to some really interesting class discussions, though! Overall, a book that has drawn my attention to Fielding as an author, but not one I think I will reread anytime soon.
November 23, 2015
I'm surprised that this book is so highly rated by so many, but I found little of the humor or wit that attracted me to Tom Jones, and without those there seems little else to recommend this book. It's a simple morality tale with the "Great Man" irony laid on heavily, but I found nothing that made it stand out. I've read a pack of picaresque novels and this falls on the lower end in inventiveness or interesting incidence. Wild is a static character, as many of Fielding's characters are, but he seems to be incredibly oblivious to just how inept he is. This would seem to be a formula for comic invention, yet Fielding fails to ever cash in on the folly he displays, and I became annoyed by Wild's middling shenanigans and found the end of this small book too welcome.
December 1, 2008
Henry Fielding a luat literatura nu ca un scop în sine când a scris Johnathan Wild, ci mai degrabă ca instrument politic, deşi nu-şi neglijează stilul specific britanic, cu reţineri, ezitări, aprecieri sociale, conversaţii şi referinţe la cititorii perioadei. E foarte evidentă intenţia de ironizare a oamenilor politici de influenţă ai perioadei, imediat ce treci de primele pagini. Dacă treci la citit fără nicio informaţie despre Anglia sec.XVII-XVIII, probabil că nu prinzi paralela pe care o face Fielding între cunoscutul şef al unei bande de hoţi din acea perioadă, Jonathan Wild şi Robert Walpole, recunoscutul-prim Prim-Ministru al Marii Britanii. Cu puţin efort şi Wikipedia, afli că ironia pişcătoare, zeflemeaua, luatul peste picior, spuneţi-i cum vreţi, este îndreptată spre Walpole şi partidul din care făcea parte, Whig-alias Partidul Liberal al Marii Britanii. Uriaşa opoziţie faţă de acesta este mascată de povestirea vieţii hoţului şi a bandei sale pe care o struneşte urmărindu-şi scopurile proprii.
Firul epic al cărţii este, evident, viaţa şi fărădelegile lui Wild, dar se desparte uneori pentru a clarifica mecanismul unor întâmplări/răutăţi. În schimb firul ironiei lui Fielding la adreasa lui Wild -întâmplător, voi nu vă imaginaţi ironia de culoare roşie?- este unul singur, neramificat şi foarte foarte evident. Imposibil să-l rataţi. Pentru că e în italice. Pentru că ne este explicat raţionamentul lui într-un prim capitol. Pentru că o să vă fie anunţat întruna la fiecare faptă a hoţului, ca laitmotiv al vieţii sale măreţe.De fapt, aţi găsi-o şi în titlu dacă aţi citi cartea în engleză: The Life and Death of Jonathan Wild, the Great.
Măreţia. Aceeaşi măreţie caracteristică lui Alexandru cel Mare sau Iulius Caesar. Măreţia pe care unii istorici îndrăznesc să o poteze menţionând şi fapte josnice de bunătate sau milă faţă de semeni. Pentru că ele reflectă numai şi numai impuritatea atât de greu de găsită a răutăţii într-un om : "[..] [scriitorii] şi-au dat cât mai mult silinţa să confunde ideea de "măreţie" cu aceea de "bunătate", deşi nu există două lucruri mai puţin asemănătoare. Deoarece "măreţie" înseamnă a aduce tot soiul de rele asupra omenirii, pe când "bunătate" înseamnă a o feri de ele. [..] În istoria lui Alexandru şi a lui Cezar ni se reaminteşte deseori, cu adevărată neruşinare, bunăvoinţa şi gerenozitatea lor, clemenţa şi bunătatea lor. Într-adevăr, cu toate că primul a trecut prin foc şi sabieun întreg imperiu şi a luat viaţa a nenumăraţi oameni nevinovaţi, pârjolind şi pustiind ca un uragan, ni se istoriseşte totuşi, ca mărturie a clemenţei lui, faptul că n-a tăiat beregata vreunei bătrâne, mulţumindu-se doar să-i siluiască fiicele.[..] Dar cine nu vede că asemenea însuşiri înşelătoare trebuie mai degrabă deplânse ca scăderi decât admirate ca merite ale acelor Oameni Mari? Că ele mai degrabă le întunecă gloria şi-i stingheresc în goana lor spre "măreţie" [..]" Opresc aici citatul (care ar putea foarte bine să cuprindă tot capitolul, în ce priveşte relevanţa). Îmi pare relevant ca idee despre unde duce ironia lui Fielding în legătură cu definiţia unui Om Mare şi despre doza ei în carte. Originea zeflemelei e porecla lui Walpole în vremea când se afla la conducere şi modul în care îi plăcea acestuia să fie numit. E de la sine înţeles că doar atâta grandomanie să fi avut, ar fi fost de ajuns să tenteze satiricii vremii. Pe lângă asta însă, Fielding asociază partidul Whig cu banda lui Wild, ca o aluzie la faptele lor asemănătoare.
Personajele sînt extrem de puţin dezvoltate, doar cel central are reflectorul pe el. Celelorlalte, Fielding se mulţumeşte să le aplice o etichetă prin nume sugestive (care, inspirat în cazul ăsta, ne sînt explicate în note de subsol): Heartfree, Fireblood, Bagshot ş.a.. Din punctul ăsta de vedere, e cît se poate de superficial, dar mă îndoiesc că neintenţionat. Până şi Fielding poate fi caracterizat mai uşor după lectura cărţii decât unul din personajele sale relativ des întâlnite, cum ar fi Heartfree. Mă gândesc eu că ăsta o şi fi fost scopul, că literatura lui e oglinda opiniilor lui politice şi sociale mai degrabă decât sursă de puricat a procedeelor artistice. Că însăşi nepăsarea faţă de profunzimea personajelor şi lipsa cu desărvâşire a oricărei tente de analiză psihologică poate fi luată ca stilul lui Fielding, ok, dar nu oferă prea mult criticii, opinia mea.
Bun, personajul principal, Jonathan Wild, cel care suferă toate în numele lui Walpole are şi el meritele lui, săracul, doar că i-au cam pălit din cauza scriitorilor "nemiloşi" care-l folosesc fără cel mai elementar bun simţ în cărţile lor ca pe-un prilej de ironie şi făcut paralele politice. Deşi Fielding se mărgineşte să creeze o singură situaţie care să-i arate lipsa de scrupule şi menţionează la grămadă alte mici hoţii, nu mă-ndoiesc că Wild a avut multe merite pentru "incidente" din Londra şi împrejurimi. Cea mai impresionantă faptă a lui apare şi în carte, deşi cam trecător faţă de cum ar merita: Jonathan şi-a alcătuit o bandă de hoţi, după cum am mai zis, care făcea treabă şi aducea "marfa". Mereu în slujba societăţii, Wild "găsea" obiectele prin oamenii lui şi pentru o sumă de bani oferită ca recompensă pentru "strădanii", oamenii îşi puteau primi obiectele înapoi. Ca să nu bată la ochi, şefu mai preda din când în când câte un hoţ neascultător poliţiei şi iată cum îşi îndeplinea el slujba de cetăţean mai bine ca majoritatea.
Sfârşitul măreţ, la spânzurătoare, aflu că a venit, nu aşa cum ne spune Fielding (în ciuda sincerităţii pe care ne-a promis-o), printr-un judecător care află de faptele-i nemernice şi în slujba dreptăţii şi întru ajutorarea sărmanilor, îl trimite unde-i e locul, ci pentru o furăciune.
Până una alta, satira asta politică devine plictisitoare cam aşa, pe la jumătate de drum, din cauza măreţiei ăsteia prea obsesiv scoasă la înaintare, deşi la început se gustă ironia care stârneşte pufnituri amuzate. Mă rog, asta se scuză cu publicarea în foileton. Trebuie să scuzăm clasicii; sau nu.
note to myself:Musai sa traduc asta odata. :D
Firul epic al cărţii este, evident, viaţa şi fărădelegile lui Wild, dar se desparte uneori pentru a clarifica mecanismul unor întâmplări/răutăţi. În schimb firul ironiei lui Fielding la adreasa lui Wild -întâmplător, voi nu vă imaginaţi ironia de culoare roşie?- este unul singur, neramificat şi foarte foarte evident. Imposibil să-l rataţi. Pentru că e în italice. Pentru că ne este explicat raţionamentul lui într-un prim capitol. Pentru că o să vă fie anunţat întruna la fiecare faptă a hoţului, ca laitmotiv al vieţii sale măreţe.De fapt, aţi găsi-o şi în titlu dacă aţi citi cartea în engleză: The Life and Death of Jonathan Wild, the Great.
Măreţia. Aceeaşi măreţie caracteristică lui Alexandru cel Mare sau Iulius Caesar. Măreţia pe care unii istorici îndrăznesc să o poteze menţionând şi fapte josnice de bunătate sau milă faţă de semeni. Pentru că ele reflectă numai şi numai impuritatea atât de greu de găsită a răutăţii într-un om : "[..] [scriitorii] şi-au dat cât mai mult silinţa să confunde ideea de "măreţie" cu aceea de "bunătate", deşi nu există două lucruri mai puţin asemănătoare. Deoarece "măreţie" înseamnă a aduce tot soiul de rele asupra omenirii, pe când "bunătate" înseamnă a o feri de ele. [..] În istoria lui Alexandru şi a lui Cezar ni se reaminteşte deseori, cu adevărată neruşinare, bunăvoinţa şi gerenozitatea lor, clemenţa şi bunătatea lor. Într-adevăr, cu toate că primul a trecut prin foc şi sabieun întreg imperiu şi a luat viaţa a nenumăraţi oameni nevinovaţi, pârjolind şi pustiind ca un uragan, ni se istoriseşte totuşi, ca mărturie a clemenţei lui, faptul că n-a tăiat beregata vreunei bătrâne, mulţumindu-se doar să-i siluiască fiicele.[..] Dar cine nu vede că asemenea însuşiri înşelătoare trebuie mai degrabă deplânse ca scăderi decât admirate ca merite ale acelor Oameni Mari? Că ele mai degrabă le întunecă gloria şi-i stingheresc în goana lor spre "măreţie" [..]" Opresc aici citatul (care ar putea foarte bine să cuprindă tot capitolul, în ce priveşte relevanţa). Îmi pare relevant ca idee despre unde duce ironia lui Fielding în legătură cu definiţia unui Om Mare şi despre doza ei în carte. Originea zeflemelei e porecla lui Walpole în vremea când se afla la conducere şi modul în care îi plăcea acestuia să fie numit. E de la sine înţeles că doar atâta grandomanie să fi avut, ar fi fost de ajuns să tenteze satiricii vremii. Pe lângă asta însă, Fielding asociază partidul Whig cu banda lui Wild, ca o aluzie la faptele lor asemănătoare.
Personajele sînt extrem de puţin dezvoltate, doar cel central are reflectorul pe el. Celelorlalte, Fielding se mulţumeşte să le aplice o etichetă prin nume sugestive (care, inspirat în cazul ăsta, ne sînt explicate în note de subsol): Heartfree, Fireblood, Bagshot ş.a.. Din punctul ăsta de vedere, e cît se poate de superficial, dar mă îndoiesc că neintenţionat. Până şi Fielding poate fi caracterizat mai uşor după lectura cărţii decât unul din personajele sale relativ des întâlnite, cum ar fi Heartfree. Mă gândesc eu că ăsta o şi fi fost scopul, că literatura lui e oglinda opiniilor lui politice şi sociale mai degrabă decât sursă de puricat a procedeelor artistice. Că însăşi nepăsarea faţă de profunzimea personajelor şi lipsa cu desărvâşire a oricărei tente de analiză psihologică poate fi luată ca stilul lui Fielding, ok, dar nu oferă prea mult criticii, opinia mea.
Bun, personajul principal, Jonathan Wild, cel care suferă toate în numele lui Walpole are şi el meritele lui, săracul, doar că i-au cam pălit din cauza scriitorilor "nemiloşi" care-l folosesc fără cel mai elementar bun simţ în cărţile lor ca pe-un prilej de ironie şi făcut paralele politice. Deşi Fielding se mărgineşte să creeze o singură situaţie care să-i arate lipsa de scrupule şi menţionează la grămadă alte mici hoţii, nu mă-ndoiesc că Wild a avut multe merite pentru "incidente" din Londra şi împrejurimi. Cea mai impresionantă faptă a lui apare şi în carte, deşi cam trecător faţă de cum ar merita: Jonathan şi-a alcătuit o bandă de hoţi, după cum am mai zis, care făcea treabă şi aducea "marfa". Mereu în slujba societăţii, Wild "găsea" obiectele prin oamenii lui şi pentru o sumă de bani oferită ca recompensă pentru "strădanii", oamenii îşi puteau primi obiectele înapoi. Ca să nu bată la ochi, şefu mai preda din când în când câte un hoţ neascultător poliţiei şi iată cum îşi îndeplinea el slujba de cetăţean mai bine ca majoritatea.
Sfârşitul măreţ, la spânzurătoare, aflu că a venit, nu aşa cum ne spune Fielding (în ciuda sincerităţii pe care ne-a promis-o), printr-un judecător care află de faptele-i nemernice şi în slujba dreptăţii şi întru ajutorarea sărmanilor, îl trimite unde-i e locul, ci pentru o furăciune.
Până una alta, satira asta politică devine plictisitoare cam aşa, pe la jumătate de drum, din cauza măreţiei ăsteia prea obsesiv scoasă la înaintare, deşi la început se gustă ironia care stârneşte pufnituri amuzate. Mă rog, asta se scuză cu publicarea în foileton. Trebuie să scuzăm clasicii; sau nu.
note to myself:Musai sa traduc asta odata. :D
August 2, 2023
Some of you have heard about how pop culture commentator Shea Serranno has slagged movies made before 1970, because not only does he consider them 'not fun" but he thinks in the 1930s moviemakers hadn't "figured everything out yet." While this is a ludicrous idea to attach to film history, it makes a little more sense with respect to English literature, and the "figuring out" of the novel. Fielding, using the life of a real criminal for his burlesque, flails all over the place here with digressions and wit and circumlocutions and pretty bracing early 18th-century outrageousness. But he makes almost every dialogue occasion a speech (except when he reverts to dramatic form in recounting an argument between the title anti-hero and his wife) and treats major pieces of action — as when the anti-hero is stabbed in the gut by a gang member — as asides. Interesting and exasperating. But worth reading not just for the laughs (there are several) but for a look at the state of the form as it was evolving.
September 18, 2024
Here comes a bold statement: Henry Fielding was to novels what John Waters was to film. Was Fielding the Pope of Trash of 18th century London? Food for thought.
Anyway Fielding's "Jonathan Wild" is an odd one, but I liked it. It was a bit slow, and in some respects it was a bit of a slog to get through--but it was also pretty engaging. Novels from the 1700s are surprisingly modern. Society changes but people really don't. Jonathan Wild is just a hilariously, horrible person manipulating innocents and taking advantage wherever he can. At some points, Fielding's book goes over the top, and like a Waters film--It's so bad that it's good.
Anyway Fielding's "Jonathan Wild" is an odd one, but I liked it. It was a bit slow, and in some respects it was a bit of a slog to get through--but it was also pretty engaging. Novels from the 1700s are surprisingly modern. Society changes but people really don't. Jonathan Wild is just a hilariously, horrible person manipulating innocents and taking advantage wherever he can. At some points, Fielding's book goes over the top, and like a Waters film--It's so bad that it's good.
March 17, 2022
Since reading earlier this year Henry Fielding: A Life by Martin C. Battestin and Ruthe R. Battestin, 1989, I’ve made it a point to read and re-read all of Fielding’s principal novels. What most impressed me about Fielding when I first read Tom Jones 50 years ago and again about five years ago was the fluency of his writing, the full, rounded Augustan prose, which has echoes in Samuel Johnson and Jane Austen. There is an assured deftness and felicity in his long, well-balanced periods, which are generally employed with good humor and a winking irony. Though the Battestins did not make clear precisely how Fielding developed this facility with language, it is clear that Fielding took his Latin and Greek seriously and very quickly adopted a style that emulated Latin models. His success as a dramatist was almost immediate, when at the age of 22 he had his first play staged. He was the decade’s most prolific and most popular playwright, but his satiric barbs were too pointed and his targets too well defined, so that Roger Walpole had Parliament enact the Theatrical Licensing Act of 1737, which required all plays be vetted prior to their production.
While Fielding had been busy as a dramatist during the 30s, he also participated in anonymous journalistic sniping at Walpole and the Whigs. When he lost his principal livelihood, Fielding continued to snipe for a while longer, even as he studied for the bar in order to become a justice. After Shamela and then Joseph Andrews, which were spurred by Samuel Richardson’s success with his epistolary novel Pamela, Fielding launched one more salvo at Walpole, in 1743, the mock-heroic account of the still notorious Jonathan Wild (hanged in 1725), which life as a Great Man was compared with the other prominent Great Man in England, Roger Walpole.
Walpole and Fielding came to some sort of understanding (Battestin suspects that Walpole dangled prospects of a sinecure in front of the always impecunious Fielding), and Fielding refrained after 1743 from further assaults on Walpole in journals or elsewhere, and in 1754 revised Jonathan Wild to remove or tamp down the comparison he was making between Wild and Walpole. [The edition I read was of the 1743 version (Oxford World’s Classics), while I know from perusing a Penguin edition of the novel that their editors chose to use the later, 1754 text.]
Jonathan Wild’s story was well-known in London and his reputation/legend/infamy still extant even 18 years after his death, so Fielding’s salvo against Walpole required no footnotes (as it does for most of us, centuries later). My edition and Penguin both included contemporary accounts of Jonathan Wild’s life and death, written shortly after his hanging: H.D., a court clerk, composed the former, and Daniel Defoe was the author of the latter account. Both of these approximately 30-page accounts jibe in their principal details, while each offers alternate examples to show the method and extent of Wild’s criminal operations. Wild was apparently a clever operator for almost fifteen years, and he amassed a good fortune, married six times, and controlled a criminal network that was subdivided throughout London. Wild’s method was to act as go-between to robber and victim, seeing to it that the stolen merchandise was returned for a fee. Wild was careful never to touch the stolen goods, nor the money that was paid over by victims. Nevertheless, he doled out the proceeds to his benefit, and he controlled his robber minions by having those who crossed him arrested, tried, and hanged (or transported). Parliament eventually, in 1723, enacted a law specifically outlawing the go-between role Wild assumed, but after only a short time of suppressed activity, Wild was flagrantly back in business, which led very quickly to his arrest.
Fielding little cares for the real facts of Wild’s life, and his version of Wild is both more colorful and more absurd than the truth, which makes for a more diverting, less sordid satiric romp. The chief trope Fielding employs is the vilification/identification of the Great Man—a la Alexander the Great or Charles II (of Sweden)—with any villain that would pursue his own fortunes at the expense of others. This comparison runs throughout the novel, and it is strained at points, but the underlying conceit—that those who would lead others are often psychopaths—is sound. Fielding’s Wild is often as much a booby as his victims, so it is often difficult in this satire to square this portrait and Wild’s historical reputation.
Fielding even sets up a contrasting couple, the jeweler Heartfree and his wife, whose long-suffering, kind-hearted virtues are sorely tested by Wild, but whose ultimate fate is immediately contrasted with Wild’s. One of the most diverting segments of the novel, which is wildly picaresque, is Mrs. Heartfree’s adventures on French and English ships, then her sojourn in Africa, where at each stage she is fending off suitors in her quest to return to England. Wild is often a dunce in his dealings with his chief subordinate, but he is most particularly inept in dealing with his single wife, who keeps him at arm’s length while surreptitiously entertaining others. I speculate that it was Fielding’s attempt by proxy to pin horns on Walpole, to belittle him as a frustrated cuckold.
Fielding’s dramaturgical skills are in view throughout, and he has players coming and going in their proper turn to discover new revelations and finally bring the silly proceedings to an “apotheosis”. Wild, Fielding says, is so consistent in his (Great, ie, villainous) character that there is visible in his dead hand the corkscrew he’d plucked from the attending clergyman’s robe. Probably too long for modern tastes, Fielding’s Jonathan Wild is still a lively romp, and its fulsome ironies are made palatable by the versatility Fielding displays with his own nimble and light-fingered perorations.
While Fielding had been busy as a dramatist during the 30s, he also participated in anonymous journalistic sniping at Walpole and the Whigs. When he lost his principal livelihood, Fielding continued to snipe for a while longer, even as he studied for the bar in order to become a justice. After Shamela and then Joseph Andrews, which were spurred by Samuel Richardson’s success with his epistolary novel Pamela, Fielding launched one more salvo at Walpole, in 1743, the mock-heroic account of the still notorious Jonathan Wild (hanged in 1725), which life as a Great Man was compared with the other prominent Great Man in England, Roger Walpole.
Walpole and Fielding came to some sort of understanding (Battestin suspects that Walpole dangled prospects of a sinecure in front of the always impecunious Fielding), and Fielding refrained after 1743 from further assaults on Walpole in journals or elsewhere, and in 1754 revised Jonathan Wild to remove or tamp down the comparison he was making between Wild and Walpole. [The edition I read was of the 1743 version (Oxford World’s Classics), while I know from perusing a Penguin edition of the novel that their editors chose to use the later, 1754 text.]
Jonathan Wild’s story was well-known in London and his reputation/legend/infamy still extant even 18 years after his death, so Fielding’s salvo against Walpole required no footnotes (as it does for most of us, centuries later). My edition and Penguin both included contemporary accounts of Jonathan Wild’s life and death, written shortly after his hanging: H.D., a court clerk, composed the former, and Daniel Defoe was the author of the latter account. Both of these approximately 30-page accounts jibe in their principal details, while each offers alternate examples to show the method and extent of Wild’s criminal operations. Wild was apparently a clever operator for almost fifteen years, and he amassed a good fortune, married six times, and controlled a criminal network that was subdivided throughout London. Wild’s method was to act as go-between to robber and victim, seeing to it that the stolen merchandise was returned for a fee. Wild was careful never to touch the stolen goods, nor the money that was paid over by victims. Nevertheless, he doled out the proceeds to his benefit, and he controlled his robber minions by having those who crossed him arrested, tried, and hanged (or transported). Parliament eventually, in 1723, enacted a law specifically outlawing the go-between role Wild assumed, but after only a short time of suppressed activity, Wild was flagrantly back in business, which led very quickly to his arrest.
Fielding little cares for the real facts of Wild’s life, and his version of Wild is both more colorful and more absurd than the truth, which makes for a more diverting, less sordid satiric romp. The chief trope Fielding employs is the vilification/identification of the Great Man—a la Alexander the Great or Charles II (of Sweden)—with any villain that would pursue his own fortunes at the expense of others. This comparison runs throughout the novel, and it is strained at points, but the underlying conceit—that those who would lead others are often psychopaths—is sound. Fielding’s Wild is often as much a booby as his victims, so it is often difficult in this satire to square this portrait and Wild’s historical reputation.
Fielding even sets up a contrasting couple, the jeweler Heartfree and his wife, whose long-suffering, kind-hearted virtues are sorely tested by Wild, but whose ultimate fate is immediately contrasted with Wild’s. One of the most diverting segments of the novel, which is wildly picaresque, is Mrs. Heartfree’s adventures on French and English ships, then her sojourn in Africa, where at each stage she is fending off suitors in her quest to return to England. Wild is often a dunce in his dealings with his chief subordinate, but he is most particularly inept in dealing with his single wife, who keeps him at arm’s length while surreptitiously entertaining others. I speculate that it was Fielding’s attempt by proxy to pin horns on Walpole, to belittle him as a frustrated cuckold.
Fielding’s dramaturgical skills are in view throughout, and he has players coming and going in their proper turn to discover new revelations and finally bring the silly proceedings to an “apotheosis”. Wild, Fielding says, is so consistent in his (Great, ie, villainous) character that there is visible in his dead hand the corkscrew he’d plucked from the attending clergyman’s robe. Probably too long for modern tastes, Fielding’s Jonathan Wild is still a lively romp, and its fulsome ironies are made palatable by the versatility Fielding displays with his own nimble and light-fingered perorations.
July 26, 2013
Fielding's take on the idea that you can either be good or great but not both (although you can be neither, of course). Wild is obviously great b ut not good. This is a take-off on a real person, also named Jonathan Wild, who was hanged at Tyburn in Fielding's lifetime. Also a bit of a political parody, punching England's buttons on its stance of being both good and great. Archaic language but easy reading as Fielding is a great (and good!) writer. Interesting contrast to Thomas de Quincey's another, John Williams, as a person with credentials for being the perpetrator of an aesthetic murder. By the way, the edition I read was the Heritage Society book, published in the 1950's, not here listed.
December 19, 2019
this book took me forever to read, not because its long (about 200 pages), or because its bad, but because i had the misfortune of starting it right near finals time which totally distracted me from doing anything fun. after it was over i couldn't really get back into it too easily. while the book wasn't bad, it wasn't specatular either, and if goodreads allowed half increments of stars, it would get a 3.5. the characters weren't as charming or rich as they were in tom jones, nor did it contain as high quantity of the lulz, but i definitely enjoyed the musings of thieves as being great men and honest do-gooders as being weak and feeble minded.
July 17, 2017
I had a hard time starting this book: Fielding is a satirist, and from his pen flows hyperbole and excess. Sentences often balloon to paragraphs.
That said, once I settled down and got into the narrative, I really admired this book. The "hero," Jonathan Wild, is incorrigible. Based partly on a real life bandit, and partly on a politician the author despised, Wild is the worst sort of person, all while the narrator sings his praises and compares him to Caesar or Alexander the Great.
It isn't an easy read, but Wild's growth from common prig (thief) to mob boss to his inevitable execution is never dull.
That said, once I settled down and got into the narrative, I really admired this book. The "hero," Jonathan Wild, is incorrigible. Based partly on a real life bandit, and partly on a politician the author despised, Wild is the worst sort of person, all while the narrator sings his praises and compares him to Caesar or Alexander the Great.
It isn't an easy read, but Wild's growth from common prig (thief) to mob boss to his inevitable execution is never dull.
April 4, 2019
Can't really do it justice right now. I read an old 1960's (older?) paperback version with no margins and densely densely packed type. Very hard to read and enjoy the full benefit of the excellent word play, plot twists and commentary of human nature. I had to laugh at myself toward the end when the author was delving at great length into the weak logical/philosphical position of the Greeks and.....the discussion just abruptly ended. I was eagerly awaiting the author's analysis. I'm on the cusp between 3-4.
March 2, 2018
Built out of pure irony, WIld was a pretty easy read and absorbing due to it’s consistent and comic perspective - that a great man is one who diddles people and the normal run of honest people are weak and waiting to be diddled. This did however mean there was little catharsis at the end or much rooting for the hero. Very funny nonetheless. Though I will never think the same of the word ‘great’ again.
February 23, 2012
For Henry Fielding, greatness rhymes with mayhem, and being a great man means bringing all kinds of mischief upon mankind.
The book was refreshing and well written, and at times I was amazed at the sheer wit possessed by Wild and his ability to influence even the smartest person with carefully chosen words. This book is a ferocious and, unfortunately, still very typical satire.
The book was refreshing and well written, and at times I was amazed at the sheer wit possessed by Wild and his ability to influence even the smartest person with carefully chosen words. This book is a ferocious and, unfortunately, still very typical satire.
February 10, 2021
Pretty good, but you really have to enjoy the uniquely formal style of 18th century fictional writing. Essentially, the book describes the adventures of a enlightenment era sociopath. There is a bit of humor here and there and a "happy" ending. He is hung.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 16, 2009
It may only be 220 pages, but certainly not a quick read...full of lengthy and complex sentences, but Fielding is a master of construction...not to mention, it is funny!
March 26, 2012
Probably the most ironic book I have ever read. Fielding is spot on about what goes into making "great men."
April 19, 2013
Interesting and the usual Fielding's incredible abilities in being an excellent narrator. However a bit long for the "simplicity" (if we could say so) of the plot and story (it's not a Tom Jones!)
December 30, 2017
Callous Cockney Crime Coconut Comes a Cropper
On perusing a bookshelf in a Boston shop some 15 years past, my eye was taken by a paperback by one Henry Fielding and I was persuaded that though I had reached a fair age, I had not yet read anything by that august personage who had graced the curricula of so many English courses in my university days, which had been sadly terminated by the fact of the necessity of earning a living. Though I purchased this object of my fascination, it was not till recently that I actually did retrieve the volume from its dusty repose on an attic bookshelf and had recourse to reading it. Much to my surprise, it resembled such drab writings as "The Vicar of Wakefield" not in the least---those writings redolent of optimism and Pollyanna-like characters who insist on giving lectures on the goodness of Man while undergoing the tortures of the d--ned----but was admirably cynical and indeed not at all uneasy in the presence of sex, crime, and malfeasance in general, with which the book's "hero", Jonathan Wild, is blessed with an inordinate ability to partake of. The main character's rise and fall may be considered the main topic of the novel. While the reader is still forced to suffer a large portion of lecture and soliloquy thanks to the 18th century tendency to partake of such in every writing, big or small, the story itself is quite humorous and the reader may encounter there more than a diminutive speck of enjoyment, reaching the last page having observed that life, whether then or now in our less-insalubrious 21st century, is indeed much the same, the only difference being that debtors of those more abrupt times went to prison and the malfeasants of that era tended to end their short life spans at the end of a rope, while today, they serve but a short time in government rest homes and then return to their previous status of `honored citizen'. The characters in Fielding's novel, written two hundred years before my entrance onto the world stage, emerge vividly, endowed with such amusing names as Heartfree, Tishy Snap, Bagshot, Fireblood, and Miss Straddle, and while some of their adventures and conversations may seem to modern readers somewhat contrived and relying perhaps overmuch on deus ex machina, they are not far removed from many a Hollywood production, whose very existence could not be imagined in the author's time. Keeping in mind the tribulations of modern readers, not used to such peregrinations of oratory during the course of novels, I would say that a devotion to English literature would better lead to enjoyment of such a work than a preference for modern style in which dialogue might be deemed more natural. Nevertheless I will end my overlong diatribe on JONATHAN WILD by saying that it was meant as a satire of a Robert Walpole, a corrupt "great man" in politics of the time, and of all such men who aspire to greatness, and I beg my readers' pardon for attempting to write a review in a style not my own, but wish to remind them that if they found it tedious they may also find the said novel a bit too much, but if, on the other hand, they found it amusing, they may very well find more than a small amount of pleasure in Fielding's work itself and join me in suggesting that for this novel, though I have kept the interests of the general reader in mind as I awarded the prize, three stars are not quite sufficient.
On perusing a bookshelf in a Boston shop some 15 years past, my eye was taken by a paperback by one Henry Fielding and I was persuaded that though I had reached a fair age, I had not yet read anything by that august personage who had graced the curricula of so many English courses in my university days, which had been sadly terminated by the fact of the necessity of earning a living. Though I purchased this object of my fascination, it was not till recently that I actually did retrieve the volume from its dusty repose on an attic bookshelf and had recourse to reading it. Much to my surprise, it resembled such drab writings as "The Vicar of Wakefield" not in the least---those writings redolent of optimism and Pollyanna-like characters who insist on giving lectures on the goodness of Man while undergoing the tortures of the d--ned----but was admirably cynical and indeed not at all uneasy in the presence of sex, crime, and malfeasance in general, with which the book's "hero", Jonathan Wild, is blessed with an inordinate ability to partake of. The main character's rise and fall may be considered the main topic of the novel. While the reader is still forced to suffer a large portion of lecture and soliloquy thanks to the 18th century tendency to partake of such in every writing, big or small, the story itself is quite humorous and the reader may encounter there more than a diminutive speck of enjoyment, reaching the last page having observed that life, whether then or now in our less-insalubrious 21st century, is indeed much the same, the only difference being that debtors of those more abrupt times went to prison and the malfeasants of that era tended to end their short life spans at the end of a rope, while today, they serve but a short time in government rest homes and then return to their previous status of `honored citizen'. The characters in Fielding's novel, written two hundred years before my entrance onto the world stage, emerge vividly, endowed with such amusing names as Heartfree, Tishy Snap, Bagshot, Fireblood, and Miss Straddle, and while some of their adventures and conversations may seem to modern readers somewhat contrived and relying perhaps overmuch on deus ex machina, they are not far removed from many a Hollywood production, whose very existence could not be imagined in the author's time. Keeping in mind the tribulations of modern readers, not used to such peregrinations of oratory during the course of novels, I would say that a devotion to English literature would better lead to enjoyment of such a work than a preference for modern style in which dialogue might be deemed more natural. Nevertheless I will end my overlong diatribe on JONATHAN WILD by saying that it was meant as a satire of a Robert Walpole, a corrupt "great man" in politics of the time, and of all such men who aspire to greatness, and I beg my readers' pardon for attempting to write a review in a style not my own, but wish to remind them that if they found it tedious they may also find the said novel a bit too much, but if, on the other hand, they found it amusing, they may very well find more than a small amount of pleasure in Fielding's work itself and join me in suggesting that for this novel, though I have kept the interests of the general reader in mind as I awarded the prize, three stars are not quite sufficient.
December 12, 2025
GREAT!
This 1743 text is a gleefully bitter satire on the well known “thief taker”, Jonathan Wild, and, apparently, the parallels between him and the prime minister Robert Walpole. Great emphasis is placed throughout on the arch criminal's innumerable misdeeds, each of which is consistently proclaimed an example of “GREATNESS” (small caps for this every time). Even his ultimate hanging at Tyburn is depicted as the apotheosis of GREATNESS.
Fielding was himself an interesting figure, actually being the head of an early London police force at a time when modern policing was unheard of. He's most famous for “Tom Jones”, which I haven't read yet, I only saw the Tony Richardson film of it. It's plain from this text that he rather enjoys irony and his own education.
Being an American and in the 21st century, I only because acquainted with Wild via penny dreadfuls, in particular Edward Viles' rousing “Blueskin” in which famous thieves, Blueskin Blake and Jack Sheppard are the heroes and Jonathan Wild is the larger-than-life villain. Viles' account and Fielding's differ substantially, but that is perhaps no surprise as one is plainly satirical and the other is written over a hundred years on with more of an eye on entertainment. There is likely just as much invention in both versions, however.
Henry Fielding's handling of each episode of Wild's life is occupied very largely in quick sketches of certain events, long authorial digressions (emphasizing “GREATNESS”), and conversations which are often Wild and another trading dialogue which is in fact a series of comically lofty speeches. At one point one of Wild's own letters is inserted, displaying something closer to the criminal's actually pattern of speech and vocabulary, but the contrast itself is just another part of the comedy.
The fact that this book is mostly a satire of English politics from 300 years ago is not strictly a barrier to enjoyment. I'll admit, even with my limited knowledge, I laughed a few times reading this. Part of the effect is just the wonderful earnestness with which the criminal is given the stereotypical biography treatment.
It may trouble a modern reader that this book (again, nearly 300 years old), does not so much contain scenes in the modern sense, for a great deal is glossed over and taken for known. Wild's execution was less than 20 years old at the time of writing, and Robert Walpole had only just ended his term as prime minister. Basically, Fielding did not need to describe the events with the level of detail a historic account might tend to, because he was writing to people who had been alive while the events were happening. Without context, a fair bit is murky (including the false names applied to many of the characters), and the satire itself often needs explanation. This did result in some head scratching from time to time, but still, it did nothing to dampen the basic high comedy.
Some aspects of this are actually fairly timeless, including the fate of a woman who was ill treated by Wild, only to have adventures at sea which involved a succession of men who are all smitten with “passion” for her, not excluding the virtuous ones.
Perfection is elusive, but I did enjoy Fielding's “Jonathan Wild” and I do plan to read him again.
Read
May 1, 2025OK, hear me out: an ITV two-series crime drama entitled Wild, with the main character played by Daniel Kaluuya, about a young gang-lord who—besides running a major criminal enterprise—is also working as a covert human intelligence source for the cops, shopping his own guys for the reward money. I think it’s a story absolutely ripe for modern-day updating. Fielding wrote this short novel about Wild, the self-styled “Thief-Taker General”, who was a real person and who was hanged after overreaching and getting personally involved in one of his own robberies, about twenty years after the real man’s death, and there are lots of inaccuracies (Defoe wrote what seems to be widely regarded as the most accurate short biography, though Wild’s life was a topic that excited many authors at the time). But the story is inherently compelling, and a 21st-century perspective would be able to encompass things like police corruption, racist policing, the clash of East End “gentleman gangster” culture with the rise of gangs from other heritages, and the drug trade (more profitable than petty theft, and probably about as widespread now as pocket-picking was in the 1720s). Plus TV loves a morally gray character—someone we want to root for, even as he does terrible things. The book has a few women in it, too: the real Wild was married six times, though only once in the novel, and he also spends half the novel trying to ruin an old school friend, which involves abducting his wife (who escapes, and whose subsequent adventures could make her a secondary protagonist in the second season, I think). The novel ends with Wild’s execution; the series could end with him finally entering prison for the first time, the viewer knowing he won’t last a week inside with all the men and women he put away waiting for him. Honestly, it’d be great. Source: free shelves at Hayes station
July 5, 2020
4,5/10
Ogólnie to "Wielki Jonatan Wild" w zamiarze autora miał być błyskotliwą satyrą, w której wykazałby podobieństwa pomiędzy słynnym wówczas tytułowym rzezimieszkiem i organizatorem życia przestępczego, a brytyjskim premierem Horace'em Walpole'em, osobistym wrogiem Fieldinga. Tezę, jaką chciał wykazać pisarz, można streścić w ten sposób: każdy wielki polityk nie różni się wiele od zwykłego łotra. Zarówno łotr, jak i polityk działają i myślą w podobny sposób.
Postawiona teza jest naprawdę dobra i nawet udało się w powieści udowodnić ją, ale Fielding tylko na niej oparł jakieś 90% treści tej książki. Ciągłe twierdzenia o W i e l k o ś c i bohatera są powtarzane dosłownie w prawie każdym rozdziale (a jest ich kilkadziesiąt). Także pozostałe elementy satyryczne są powtarzalne i wyeksploatowane do maksimum. Ciągle tylko ta W i e l k o ś ć i W i e l k o ś ć. Humor zupełnie nie bawi i nie mam pojęcia dokładnie dlaczego tak jest, poza tym, że gagi są również powtarzalne, a ironiczna do przesady narracja była czasem nie do zniesienia.
Skończyłem tę książkę tylko po to, by z czystym sumieniem wystawić jej niską notę. Nie żałuję w sumie, że ją dokończyłem - pod koniec trafiło się kilka lepszych momentów, głównie historia przygód pani Heartfree, która trafiając w niewolę różnych korsarzy, a w końcu także przybywając do pewnej afrykańskiej kolonii, musiała ciągle bronić swojej cnoty przed nieczystymi zamiarami kolejnych mężczyzn, z których każdy próbował innej metody. W tych fragmentach powieść zaczęła przypominać pod pewnymi względami "Kandyda". Niestety to jedyny pozytyw "Wielkiego Jonatana Wilda". Jestem ciekawy czy bardziej znane powieści Fieldinga (np. "Tom Jones") będą tak samo irytujące.
Ogólnie to "Wielki Jonatan Wild" w zamiarze autora miał być błyskotliwą satyrą, w której wykazałby podobieństwa pomiędzy słynnym wówczas tytułowym rzezimieszkiem i organizatorem życia przestępczego, a brytyjskim premierem Horace'em Walpole'em, osobistym wrogiem Fieldinga. Tezę, jaką chciał wykazać pisarz, można streścić w ten sposób: każdy wielki polityk nie różni się wiele od zwykłego łotra. Zarówno łotr, jak i polityk działają i myślą w podobny sposób.
Postawiona teza jest naprawdę dobra i nawet udało się w powieści udowodnić ją, ale Fielding tylko na niej oparł jakieś 90% treści tej książki. Ciągłe twierdzenia o W i e l k o ś c i bohatera są powtarzane dosłownie w prawie każdym rozdziale (a jest ich kilkadziesiąt). Także pozostałe elementy satyryczne są powtarzalne i wyeksploatowane do maksimum. Ciągle tylko ta W i e l k o ś ć i W i e l k o ś ć. Humor zupełnie nie bawi i nie mam pojęcia dokładnie dlaczego tak jest, poza tym, że gagi są również powtarzalne, a ironiczna do przesady narracja była czasem nie do zniesienia.
Skończyłem tę książkę tylko po to, by z czystym sumieniem wystawić jej niską notę. Nie żałuję w sumie, że ją dokończyłem - pod koniec trafiło się kilka lepszych momentów, głównie historia przygód pani Heartfree, która trafiając w niewolę różnych korsarzy, a w końcu także przybywając do pewnej afrykańskiej kolonii, musiała ciągle bronić swojej cnoty przed nieczystymi zamiarami kolejnych mężczyzn, z których każdy próbował innej metody. W tych fragmentach powieść zaczęła przypominać pod pewnymi względami "Kandyda". Niestety to jedyny pozytyw "Wielkiego Jonatana Wilda". Jestem ciekawy czy bardziej znane powieści Fieldinga (np. "Tom Jones") będą tak samo irytujące.
June 13, 2018
The full title of this book is The Life of Mr Jonathan Wild the Great. From the outset, Fielding is at pains to point out the difference between great men and good men. Great men such as Alexander and Caesar left a trail of misery and destruction in their wake. Trying to be good would only have got in the way of their greatness. And in this sense, Fielding's Wild is a great man, having no virtues at all.
Jonathan Wild was a historical figure; he was an infamous figure in the London underworld in the early 18th century. Wild ran a gang of thieves and murderers who would take booty that he would then return for the reward offered. To keep in with the authorities, Wild regularly betrayed gang member and others that displeased him and had them sent to the gallows, styling himself the "thief-taker general". Wild was the inspiration for the Peachum in The Beggar's Opera and The Threepenny Opera, and one of his gang members was the prototype for MacHeath.
Fielding's fictionalised account of Wild's life is a brutal satire on Prime Minister Robert Walpole. His constant referral to Wild as the GREAT MAN recalls similar labels given to Walpole, and Fielding uses the term prig (similar to Whig) to denote thieves. Even at a remove of centuries, and with little knowledge of the politics of the time, it is easy to detect the venom dripping from Fielding's pen.
The book suffers from the windy prose and clumsy exposition typical of novels from that era, but that's to be expected when readers choose to tackle the classics. Despite that, there were still a few laughs to be had from Fielding's puncturing of the pompous and the corrupt.
Jonathan Wild was a historical figure; he was an infamous figure in the London underworld in the early 18th century. Wild ran a gang of thieves and murderers who would take booty that he would then return for the reward offered. To keep in with the authorities, Wild regularly betrayed gang member and others that displeased him and had them sent to the gallows, styling himself the "thief-taker general". Wild was the inspiration for the Peachum in The Beggar's Opera and The Threepenny Opera, and one of his gang members was the prototype for MacHeath.
Fielding's fictionalised account of Wild's life is a brutal satire on Prime Minister Robert Walpole. His constant referral to Wild as the GREAT MAN recalls similar labels given to Walpole, and Fielding uses the term prig (similar to Whig) to denote thieves. Even at a remove of centuries, and with little knowledge of the politics of the time, it is easy to detect the venom dripping from Fielding's pen.
The book suffers from the windy prose and clumsy exposition typical of novels from that era, but that's to be expected when readers choose to tackle the classics. Despite that, there were still a few laughs to be had from Fielding's puncturing of the pompous and the corrupt.
December 28, 2023
The story is one extended tongue-in-cheek observation upon human action. In it Fielding purposely turns morality inside out, calling good by the name of evil, and evil by the name of good. In the hand hands of a lesser writer such a method would at length become teasing and troublesome; but Fielding, through the concentration of his satirical acumen, gives us new and sharp glimpses of the hooligan's disposition.
The novel is a criminal biography, claiming to be of the disreputable highwayman who had already attracted the pen of Defoe. It con in tains veiled attack on Fielding's old enemy, Walpole, and the manner of writing is savagely caustic.
The hypothesis on which the book rests is that the qualities that made the great criminal can be shown to be identical with those that animate the Prime Minister, i. e., prominence without goodness is a profanity to mankind.
In a nutshell, in this work there is nothing of the hearty sardonic humour of Fielding, none of the conversational moralising, little of the social history. It is a forbidding and commanding piece of ironic portraiture, showing on an heroic scale the villainies of the highwayman, and wrought within an artistic skill and precision of resolve that it would be hard to overvalue.
The novel is a criminal biography, claiming to be of the disreputable highwayman who had already attracted the pen of Defoe. It con in tains veiled attack on Fielding's old enemy, Walpole, and the manner of writing is savagely caustic.
The hypothesis on which the book rests is that the qualities that made the great criminal can be shown to be identical with those that animate the Prime Minister, i. e., prominence without goodness is a profanity to mankind.
In a nutshell, in this work there is nothing of the hearty sardonic humour of Fielding, none of the conversational moralising, little of the social history. It is a forbidding and commanding piece of ironic portraiture, showing on an heroic scale the villainies of the highwayman, and wrought within an artistic skill and precision of resolve that it would be hard to overvalue.
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