Amazon.com description: Product Description: Henry Fielding (1707-1754) was an English novelist and playwright. Fielding was educated at Eton College. After a romantic episode with a young woman that ended in his getting into trouble with the law, he went to London where he began writing. When the Theatrical Licensing Act of 1737 was passed it became almost impossible to produce plays on political satire. At this point Fielding went back to his career in law. In 1741 Fielding began writing novels. His satirical humor and earthy style are evident in his most famous work Tom Jones. Fielding is also credited with forming LondonŽs first police force while he was a magistrate. From Wikipedia In 1743, he published a novel in the Miscellanies volume III (which was the first volume of the Miscellanies). This was The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great. This novel is sometimes thought of as his first because he almost certainly began composing it before he wrote Shamela and Joseph Andrews. It is a satire of Walpole that draws a parallel between Walpole and Jonathan Wild, the infamous gang leader and highwayman. He implicitly compares the Whig party in Parliament with a gang of thieves being run by Walpole, whose constant desire to be a "Great Man" (a common epithet for Walpole) should culminate only in the antithesis of greatness: being hanged.ö