Henry Fielding at Work: Magistrate, Businessman, Writer

As a writer, businessman and magistrate, Henry Fielding was in a singular position to textualize eighteenth-century English cultural conditions and materially to author the text of his society. Not only did he extol employment, he co-owned an employment agency. Not only did Fielding commit fictional criminals to paper, but he also committed actual criminals to prison. "Henry Fielding at Work" examines the intersections of Fielding's practice as magistrate, businessman, and writer, and explores the ways Fielding's experience in those capacities affected the conception, form, and articulation of his final literary works.