Henry Fielding’s Joseph Andrews was a satirical weapon against the moral hypocrisy of 1742

Science · Published 20 October 2026 Swipe more like this →

In short: Published in 1742, Henry Fielding’s first novel was more than a picaresque romp. It was a calculated strike against the literary trends of his day, specifically targeting the moral posturing of Samuel Richardson. By blending classical epic ambition with bawdy humor, Fielding redefined the possibilities of English prose fiction.

Fielding conceived Joseph Andrews as a 'comic epic-poem in prose,' a genre he claimed had never been attempted. The novel served as a direct response to the massive success of Samuel Richardson’s 1741 epistolary novel, Pamela. Fielding found Richardson’s work hypocritical, particularly its focus on a servant girl’s chastity as a commodity. His earlier parody, Shamela, had already attacked these stylistic and moral failings, but Joseph Andrews allowed Fielding to move beyond mere subversion to establish his own philosophy of fiction.

The narrative follows the footman Joseph Andrews and his mentor, the absent-minded Parson Abraham Adams, on a journey home from London. Their travels are punctuated by slapstick digressions, interpolated tales, and encounters with various social ills, including exploitative lotteries and regressive debt laws. Fielding drew heavily on the techniques of Miguel de Cervantes, utilizing a seemingly loose arrangement of events to critique the mid-18th-century culture of literary and social abuses. Characters like the poet laureate Colley Cibber were explicitly identified as offenders against propriety.

The plot is driven by classic tropes—unknown parentage, impending marriage, and mistaken identities—which culminate in a series of revelations. Joseph, initially thought to be the brother of Richardson’s Pamela, is discovered to be the long-lost son of a gentleman named Wilson, while his love interest, Fanny Goodwill, is revealed to be the daughter of the Andrews family. This resolution neatly avoids the threat of incest and secures the couple’s future. By the time the novel concludes, Fielding had successfully used the picaresque form to mock his rivals while simultaneously crafting a work rich in classical erudition and social purpose.

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