Henry Fielding

Henry Fielding was an English novelist, playwright and journalist whose literary career helped shape the development of the eighteenth-century novel. Born at Sharpham in Somerset in 1707, he was educated at Eton and studied at Leiden before becoming a prolific dramatist. After theatrical censorship curtailed the stage on which he had made his name, he trained in law and continued writing prose, producing works including Joseph Andrews and The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling.

Fielding became a Westminster justice of the peace in 1748 and conducted magisterial business from Bow Street. Faced with severe limits in London’s existing watch and constable system, he developed a more organised approach to investigating crime and in 1749 assembled a small group of paid officers whose successors became known as the Bow Street Runners. His work combined criminal justice, social observation and proposals for reform until ill health forced him to leave for Lisbon, where he died in 1754.

Henry Fielding appears as a historical character in Laura Shepherd-Robinson’s The Art of a Lie, set in London in 1749. As magistrate, he scrutinises the unexplained money left by Hannah Cole’s murdered husband, allowing the novel to place its fictional fraud and murder plot directly inside the formative years of Bow Street policing.