Henry Fielding(1707-1754)

Henry Fielding was born April 22nd 1707, the son of Edmund Fielding, an impoverished nobleman who spent most of his time in and out of various debtor's prisons. After the death of their mother, Henry and his seven siblings were taken in by their maternal grandmother. He was a wild and willful young man, and after a brief stint abroad in a Dutch college, he moved to London and began writing plays. Though his works were very successful, Henry had inherited his father's inability to handle money, and he remained perpetually in debt. In 1734, after a four year courtship, he convinced a young lady named Charlotte Craddock to marry him. Henry was madly in love with Charlotte, and they enjoyed ten happy years of marriage before her death in 1744 of a fever. Henry mourned her deeply, and Sophia Western, the heroine of his novel "Tom Jones", was modeled on Charlotte. In 1747 he married his wife's former maid, Mary Daniel, who was six months pregnant with their child at the time. Known as a brawler, a drunkard, and a womanizer, Henry was nonetheless a prolific and energetic author.

When his health failed in 1754, he sailed to Lisbon, Portugal, hoping a warmer climate would improve his constitution. Instead, he contracted jaundice there and died two months after his arrival on October 8th 1754.