Plays, vol. 1: 1728-1731. By Henry Fielding. Ed. by Thomas Lockwood. (The Wesleyan Edition of the Works of Henry Fielding) Oxford: Clarendon Press. 2004. xxviii+780 pp. 125 [pounds sterling]. ISBN 0-19-925789-2.
Fielding was no Henry James, a would-be playwright who dabbled disastrously in an alien medium. On the contrary, his energy as a novelist flows from, and creatively transforms, a theatrical career he was forced to leave off (his first biographer reports him as saying) ...