Sarah Fielding

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(b. Nov. 8, 1710, England – d. April 9, 1768, Bath, Somerset, England )

Gender: F

Sarah Fielding (1710-1768) was the sister of Henry Fielding, author of Tom Jones. Whilst Henry went to Eton, Sarah and her sisters were sent to a boarding school in Salisbury. None of them married, for lack of a dowry. In 1744, she published a novel, The Adventures of David Simple, which was praised by contemporaries, including her close friend, the novelist Samuel Richardson. The book, which was published anonymously, went into a second edition within ten weeks, and was translated into French and German. Its plot is sentimental and moralising: the hero finds true love and happiness away from the corruptions of the city. A sequel, The Adventures of David Simple, Volume the Last: In Which His History is Concluded, followed in 1753. Fielding wrote three further novels: The Governess, or The Little Female Academy (1749), which portrays the hazards of social life for the moral development of women; The History of the Countess of Dellwyn (1759), and The History of Ophelia (1760). She also published a history of two eminent historical women, The Lives of Cleopatra and Octavia (1757), based on classical sources, and translated from Greek Xenophon’s Memoirs of Socrates. After the death of her brother and sisters, she retired to Bath, where she became a friend of Sarah Scott. Scott invited Fielding to join her in her female community at Hitcham, but she was too ill to travel, and the move to Hitcham was delayed until after Fielding’s death on 9th April 1768.

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Mentioned in 6 letters

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