Sarah Fielding
born Nov. 8, 1710, East Stour,
Dorset, Eng.
died April 9, 1768, Bath, Somerset
English author and translator whose novels were
among the earliest in the English language and
the first to examine the interior lives of women
and children.
Fielding was the younger sister of the novelist
Henry Fielding, whom many readers believed to be
the author of novels she published anonymously,
although he denied these speculations in print.
She lived with her brother following the death
of his wife in 1744. That year she published her
first book, The Adventures of David Simple, a
novel whose comic prose style imitated that of
both her brother and his chief literary rival,
Samuel Richardson, who was also one of her close
friends. With the sequel, The Adventures of
David Simple, Volume the Last: In Which His
History Is Concluded (1753), she developed a
style more distinctly her own, which shows
greater intricacy of feeling, fuller development
of character, and a reduced reliance on plot.
The Governess (1749) is didactic and portrays
with comic sensibility the hazards of British
social life for the moral development of women.
Considered the first novel for girls in the
English language, it was an immediate success
and went through five editions in Fielding’s
lifetime while inspiring numerous imitations.
She published only one book under her own
name, a translation from the ancient Greek of
Xenophon’s Memoirs of Socrates (1762), a
significant achievement in that few women of
Fielding’s time acquired a scholarly command of
Classical languages. Other works include a
collaboration with her friend Jane Collier
titled The Cry: A New Dramatic Fable (1754).
Although didacticism frequently overshadows the
narrative drive of Fielding’s prose, critics
credit her as an innovator with a shrewd sense
of human motive and keen ironic humour.
