Bishop Warburton presented the author with a preface in which he pointed out the variety of the characters in the book, and commended the moral tendency of the work. This, by the way, serves to remind us that he afterward quarrelled with Richardson because the novelist ventured to censure Pope's sentiment, "Every woman is at heart a rake."
In a catalogue like this, no name has more interest than that of Samuel Richardson, "The Father of the English Novel," and a printer and publisher of distinction. At the age of seventeen he chose the profession of printer, because he thought that in it he would be able to satisfy his craving for reading. After a diligent apprenticeship to John Wilde, whose daughter was his first wife, he gradually won his way until he became one of the leading printers of his time. He issued twenty-six volumes of Journals of the House of Commons, though he found the position more honorable than lucrative; he was the printer of the Daily Journal from 1736 to 1737, and of the Daily Gazetteer in 1738; he was chosen printer to an interesting Society for the Encouragement of Learning, for whom he printed and edited their first and only volume, The Negociations of Sir Thomas Roe in his Embassy to the Ottoman Porte from the year 1621 to 1628 inclusive. He also printed, among other books, an edition of Æsop's Fables, De Foe's Tour through Great Britain, Young's Night Thoughts, and the second volume of De Thou's Historia Sui Temporis, 1733. He became a member of the Stationers' Company in 1689, and its master in 1754.
Duodecimo.
Collation: Seven volumes.
HENRY FIELDING
(1707-1754)
48. The | History | Of | Tom Jones, | A | Foundling. | In Six Volumes | By Henry Fielding, Eſq; | [Quotation] London: | Printed for A. Millar, over-againſt | Catharine-ſtreet in the Strand. | MDCCXLIX.
The announcement of the appearance of the work in the General Advertizer for February 28, 1749, reads as follows:
"This day is published, in six vols., 12mo, The History of Tom Jones, A Foundling.—Mores hominum multorum vidit. By Henry Fielding Esq.