With zest, style and humour, Henry Fielding unfolds this
curiously moral tale.
With Shamela, published in 1741, Fielding set about
exposing, by brilliant parody, the more vulnerable aspects
of Samuel Richardson's phenomenally successful Pamela. In
the following year he offered, quite deliberately, his own
alternative conception of the art and purpose of the novel:
Joseph Andrews achieved an immediate popularity.
The story of Joseph's dogged determination, against all
odds, to cling to his virtue is almost incidental in one of the
richest, sanest, funniest and most attractive novels in the
language. Drawn, as Fielding says, in imitation of
Cervantes, its Don Quixote is the unforgettable Parson
Adams - the unique embodiment of a vigorous, innocent
and rational enjoyment of life and the first great comic
character in English fiction.