The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907–21).
Volume X. The Age of Johnson.
§ 2. Fielding’s descent and earlier life
Henry Fielding was born at Sharpham park, near Glastonbury, Somerset, on 22 April, 1707. In 1713, his father, Edmund Fielding (who was directly descended from the first earl of Desmond), moved, with his wife and family, to East Stour, a few miles to the west of Shaftesbury, in the northern corner of Dorset, where Henry’s sister Sarah, the author of David Simple (1744–52), was born. His tutor here was a clergyman, named Oliver, of whom parson Trulliber, in Joseph Andrews, is said by Murphy to be a portrait. At the end of 1719 or beginning of 1720, he was sent to school at Eton, where he made friends with George (afterwards “the good” lord) Lyttelton, author of Dialogues of the Dead (1740), his firm friend in later years, to whom he dedicated Tom Jones. Here, too, he acquired a knowledge of the classics to which his works bear witness. At Lyme Regis, when eighteen years old, he fell violently in love with a daughter of a deceased local merchant named Andrew, and appears to have planned an abduction. The girl was removed to Devonshire, and Fielding worked off his emotion in an English version of Juvenal’s sixth satire, which he published, some years afterwards, revised, in his Miscellanies.