Tom Jones, a- Foundling BY HENRY FIELDING IN TWO VOLS.-VOL. I MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON 1924 COPYRIGHT First printed in the Library of English Classics 1900 PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, was first published on the 28th February 1749, with a dedication to George Lyttelton, through whose influence Fielding had been appointed a Justice of the Peace for Westminster in the previous December. The title-page of this first edition states that it was "printed for A. Millar, over against Catharinestreet in the Strand," and the industry of Mr. Austin Dobson has unearthed from the General Advertizer of the day on which the book was issued, an advertisement that as it was "impossible to get sets bound fast enough to answer the Demand, such Gentlemen and Ladies as pleased might have them sew'd in Blue Paper and Boards at the Price of 16s. a set." The success of the book was really considerable, and was handsomely acknowledged by Andrew Millar, who speedily added another hundred pounds to the six hundred which he had paid Fielding for the copyright. The first edition, in six volumes, was followed the same year by a second in four, and in 1750 Millar published another edition, also in four volumes. The issue of this third edition seems to have fully supplied the demand, for we do not hear of any other printed in Fielding's life. In the second of these three editions over which he had control, the errors of the press, of which a list was prefixed to Volume I. of the first, were duly corrected, but the text in other respects appears not to have been VOL. I a 2 |