Sir Walter Scott called Fielding ‘the father of the English novel.’ He was the first English novelist to approach the genre with a fully worked-out theory in Joseph Andrews, Tom Jones and Amelia, the comic epics or domestic epics. He established the tradition of realism presented in panoramic surveys of contemporary society that dominated English fiction until the end of the 19th century.

He was the first writer and a novelist to break away from the epistolary method. Fielding devised a new structure and theory that laid the foundation for the works of Charles Dickens, William Makepeace Thackeray and the Victorian novelists.

At every turn in his career – as novelist, dramatist, journalist and magistrate – reader feels great directing intelligence. He was a blissful innovator, creating new ideas, forms and making practical plans. He also pushed the boundaries of artistic forms.

He provoked the introduction of censorship in theatres with his political satire The Historical Register for 1736. He then turned to writing picaresque novels. Fielding was also responsible for the formation of the Bow Street Runners in 1749.