TOM JONES - Penguin

'I am shocked to hear you quote from so vicious a book. I am sorry to hear you have read it...' So said Dr Johnson of Tom Jones, and there were those who held it responsible for two earthquake shocks which hit London shortly after its publication in 1749. Few readers will nowadays subscribe to such a view. For most readers this is one of the great comic novels in the English language, a vivid Hogarthian panorama of eighteenth-century life, with a plot which Colerdige described as one of the three most perfect ever planned. In addition Tom Jones possesses an underlying seriousness and all the rich and generous humanity of its author.