Henry Fielding

(1707 - 1754)

When his allowance dried up in 1727, Henry Fielding in his early twenties was faced with “no choice but to be a hackney writer or a hackney coachman.” He wrote some twenty-five plays, one ridiculing the prime minister so wickedly that it prompted the Licensing Act of 1737 and ended Fielding’s career in the theater. He became a justice of the peace in 1748, publishing The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, a masterwork of English literature, one year later. Tireless in the war against crime, he helped to lower the city’s murder and theft rates.