What do you think?
Rate this book
Joseph Andrews, Volume 2
Excerpt: ...than the next morning: he therefore resolved to set out immediately, notwithstanding the darkness; and accordingly, as soon as the host returned, he communicated to him the situation of his affairs; upon which the host, scratching his head, answered, "Why, I do not know, master; if it be so, and you have no money, I must trust, I think, though I had rather always have ready money if I could; but, marry, you look like so honest a gentleman that I don't fear your paying me if it was twenty times as much." The priest made no reply, but, taking leave of him and Adams as fast as he could, not without confusion, and perhaps with some distrust of Adams's sincerity, departed. He was no sooner gone than the host fell a-shaking his head, and declared, if he had suspected the fellow had no money, he would not have drawn him a single drop of drink, saying he despaired of ever seeing his face again, for that he looked like a confounded rogue. "Rabbit the fellow," cries he, "I thought, by his talking so much about riches, that he had a hundred pounds at least in his pocket." Adams chid him for his suspicions, which, he said, were not becoming a Christian; and then, without reflecting on his loss, or considering how he himself should depart in the morning, he retired to a very homely bed, as his companions had before; however, health and fatigue gave them a sweeter repose than is often in the power of velvet and down to bestow. CHAPTER IX. Containing as surprizing and bloody adventures as can be found in this or perhaps any other authentic history. It was almost morning when Joseph Andrews, whose eyes the thoughts of his dear Fanny had opened, as he lay fondly meditating on that lovely creature, heard a violent knocking at the door over which he lay. He presently jumped out of bed, and, opening the window, was asked if there were no travellers in the house? and presently, by another voice, if two men and a woman had not taken up there their lodging that night?...
- GenresLinguisticsLanguage
68 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2006
6 people are currently reading
72 people want to read
About the author
Henry Fielding
2,541 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.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
July 18, 2022
This review relates to both Volumes 1 & 2 of this novel.
The full title of the novel is "The History of the Adventures of Joseph Andrews, and of his Friend Mr Abraham Adams", and the plot involves at least as much of Adams, who is a parson, as it does of Andrews, a servant who is dismissed by his employer for resisting her amorous advances.
It is, curiously, linked to the work of another author, Samuel Richardson, as Joseph Andrews is the virtuous brother of the equally virtuous Pamela Andrews, the heroine of Richardson's controversial novel, Pamela.
In a reversal of roles, Fielding has Joseph resisting the lustful advances of his employer, Mrs Booby, who is the aunt of the Mr Booby who endeavoured artfully to seduce his servant, Pamela Andrews.
When Joseph is cast out by Mrs Booby for rejecting her lustful propositions (the handsome man is also the object of carnal desire for Mrs Booby's housekeeper, Mrs Slipslop), he embarks on a set of hapless adventures with his friend Adams, the well-meaning but naive and trouble-prone parson.
The two are repeatedly left in dire circumstances, penniless and hungry, and at the mercy of others who are less often charitable than pernicious.
The true object of Joseph Andrews' affections is Fanny Goodwill, a beautiful young lass who was also a servant in the Booby household.
Andrews has occasion to rescue Fanny from a potential rape, and she joins Andrews and Adams on their travels, sharing a number of their perils and awkward situations. Fanny remains an object of lustful desire for almost every man they meet, but her chastity, which is keenly desired, remains safely intact.
Joseph and Fanny are determined to marry, but others contrive vigorously against that outcome. Adams is supportive, but is insistent that they follow the correct process, issuing the necessary banns three times before a licence can be issued.
At length, the origins and parentage of both Fanny and Joseph are brought into question, further putting at risk the legality of a potential marriage between them, but after a couple of clever plot twists, Fielding resolves matters to ensure a satisfying conclusion.
This was a strange novel, at times satisfying and at others somewhat too romantic and moralistic. Its premise, in that it references heavily the work of another author (Richardson's Pamela), was curiously plagiaristic in nature. Pamela and her husband Mr Booby feature prominently in the latter stages of the story.
It makes me a little curious to read Pamela some time in the near future.
The full title of the novel is "The History of the Adventures of Joseph Andrews, and of his Friend Mr Abraham Adams", and the plot involves at least as much of Adams, who is a parson, as it does of Andrews, a servant who is dismissed by his employer for resisting her amorous advances.
It is, curiously, linked to the work of another author, Samuel Richardson, as Joseph Andrews is the virtuous brother of the equally virtuous Pamela Andrews, the heroine of Richardson's controversial novel, Pamela.
In a reversal of roles, Fielding has Joseph resisting the lustful advances of his employer, Mrs Booby, who is the aunt of the Mr Booby who endeavoured artfully to seduce his servant, Pamela Andrews.
When Joseph is cast out by Mrs Booby for rejecting her lustful propositions (the handsome man is also the object of carnal desire for Mrs Booby's housekeeper, Mrs Slipslop), he embarks on a set of hapless adventures with his friend Adams, the well-meaning but naive and trouble-prone parson.
The two are repeatedly left in dire circumstances, penniless and hungry, and at the mercy of others who are less often charitable than pernicious.
The true object of Joseph Andrews' affections is Fanny Goodwill, a beautiful young lass who was also a servant in the Booby household.
Andrews has occasion to rescue Fanny from a potential rape, and she joins Andrews and Adams on their travels, sharing a number of their perils and awkward situations. Fanny remains an object of lustful desire for almost every man they meet, but her chastity, which is keenly desired, remains safely intact.
Joseph and Fanny are determined to marry, but others contrive vigorously against that outcome. Adams is supportive, but is insistent that they follow the correct process, issuing the necessary banns three times before a licence can be issued.
At length, the origins and parentage of both Fanny and Joseph are brought into question, further putting at risk the legality of a potential marriage between them, but after a couple of clever plot twists, Fielding resolves matters to ensure a satisfying conclusion.
This was a strange novel, at times satisfying and at others somewhat too romantic and moralistic. Its premise, in that it references heavily the work of another author (Richardson's Pamela), was curiously plagiaristic in nature. Pamela and her husband Mr Booby feature prominently in the latter stages of the story.
It makes me a little curious to read Pamela some time in the near future.
June 15, 2022
A genial comedy with a feeling of genuine fondness for its central characters, including the absurdly disheveled, forgetful, and sometimes too easily provoked clergyman who is the title character's mentor and friend. It makes full use of coincidence to first create, and then resolve, tension, but it also uses human agency to the same purpose, giving us villains to boo in the form of a venial and dissipated squire and his sinister henchmen, and getting the heroes through a number of adventures with the help of good-hearted people they happen to encounter, along with a number of ill-tempered and ungenerous characters and several other outright rogues.
Part of the satire, I think, is that everyone is a bit exaggerated, like a caricature in a political cartoon. And yet what Fielding is exaggerating in human nature is familiar to us even today, and certainly would have been familiar to his readers, so that his characters have a weight and heft to them. They're simultaneously types and memorable individuals.
Fielding is also well known as being one of the founders (along with his brother) of the Bow Street Runners, Britain's first properly constituted police force, and as a magistrate who sought to apply the law fairly and justly, and I was reminded of these facts when reading about the arbitrary application of the law by ignorant country justices of the peace, who could send poor people to be imprisoned or whipped for minor infractions with no recourse if egged on by more powerful people who had an agenda. Also, when reading about the criminals who were, apparently, often at large preying on travellers, and seldom caught and punished.
The author uses his authorial powers to make everything come out well in the end, though, and leaves us with a satisfactory conclusion for our heroes. While the long eighteenth-century sentences can be a bit challenging if you're reading it after a tiring day, it's not nearly so convoluted as other writing of the time, and I generally followed it easily and enjoyed both the journey and the people I encountered on it.
Part of the satire, I think, is that everyone is a bit exaggerated, like a caricature in a political cartoon. And yet what Fielding is exaggerating in human nature is familiar to us even today, and certainly would have been familiar to his readers, so that his characters have a weight and heft to them. They're simultaneously types and memorable individuals.
Fielding is also well known as being one of the founders (along with his brother) of the Bow Street Runners, Britain's first properly constituted police force, and as a magistrate who sought to apply the law fairly and justly, and I was reminded of these facts when reading about the arbitrary application of the law by ignorant country justices of the peace, who could send poor people to be imprisoned or whipped for minor infractions with no recourse if egged on by more powerful people who had an agenda. Also, when reading about the criminals who were, apparently, often at large preying on travellers, and seldom caught and punished.
The author uses his authorial powers to make everything come out well in the end, though, and leaves us with a satisfactory conclusion for our heroes. While the long eighteenth-century sentences can be a bit challenging if you're reading it after a tiring day, it's not nearly so convoluted as other writing of the time, and I generally followed it easily and enjoyed both the journey and the people I encountered on it.
March 4, 2025
This book takes place after Shamela, after she is married to Booby and still living with him. Shamela is a hilarious and crystal concentrated Epistolary novella, without the sinuous digressions of Charles Dickens, the book mostly builds up a single group of relationships into something comically intense and flawless for its simplistic starting place.
Unfortunately this book feels mostly like asides from Shamela. Why did Henry Fielding engorge a sideplot to the size of a novel? Why, compared to Booby and Shamela would we want to be witnessing Abraham Adams mostly chasing Fanny, who does not even make an interesting mark?
Read this solely compared to later works of Fielding and Dickens only if you are interested in where Fielding's writing comes from. In other works, where the notion of digression finally clicks this used to give the shape of a wide world full of hidden stories to navigate-- but in Abraham Adams it is an exercise in inconcetration that makes rather confusingly enlarged work
Plotwise early is a forced picaresque as, as it is mostly dependent on the foolishness of Adams-- his unexplained tendency to associate with anybody, that is not intended as part of the humor.
The notion is something like take a novella like Shamella and stuff it full of divergences, on its own this work would've come to look like a result of Fielding's notion of editing.
Unfortunately this book feels mostly like asides from Shamela. Why did Henry Fielding engorge a sideplot to the size of a novel? Why, compared to Booby and Shamela would we want to be witnessing Abraham Adams mostly chasing Fanny, who does not even make an interesting mark?
Read this solely compared to later works of Fielding and Dickens only if you are interested in where Fielding's writing comes from. In other works, where the notion of digression finally clicks this used to give the shape of a wide world full of hidden stories to navigate-- but in Abraham Adams it is an exercise in inconcetration that makes rather confusingly enlarged work
Plotwise early is a forced picaresque as, as it is mostly dependent on the foolishness of Adams-- his unexplained tendency to associate with anybody, that is not intended as part of the humor.
The notion is something like take a novella like Shamella and stuff it full of divergences, on its own this work would've come to look like a result of Fielding's notion of editing.
February 21, 2018
Slow
This book took a really long time for the story to really get going, and the story was not as strong as some of Fielding's other works, like Tom Jones.
This book took a really long time for the story to really get going, and the story was not as strong as some of Fielding's other works, like Tom Jones.
August 26, 2019
Humorous than Volume 1, the only compensation for the dragging plot and another star.
December 22, 2019
I am sure he himself never suspected how much I loved him.
October 2, 2011
Sadly, I didn't find the second half of Mr. Fielding's Joseph Andrews any more interesting than the first. The last 2 chapters did offer a bit of a plot twist, but it was quickly resolved and all the little loose ends wrapped up in tidy little bows.
I literally can't think of anything about this story that stood out to me - positive or negative. I'm glad I'm done.
I literally can't think of anything about this story that stood out to me - positive or negative. I'm glad I'm done.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews