ABSTRACT
The magistrate of Bow Street closed 1751 with the publication of what would be his last novel. On 19 December, Andrew Millar started selling Amelia, the book for which he had paid his author £800. 1 This lavish disbursement is telling about the confidence that another Henry Fielding novel inspired by then. The following months, however, proved it a miscalculation. Readers expecting the ironic didacticism of the genial (and occasionally nagging) narrator of Joseph Andrews and Tom Jones to guide them through the comic adventures of a female protagonist were disappointed by the melancholic aura of Amelia. 2 The book was also plagued by several inconsistencies in naming; chronology; and, above all, the fact that the heroine’s nose is shattered early on and never repaired. 3 All of this resulted in frustration for Fielding enthusiasts and elation for his adversaries. The scathing criticism Amelia elicited from the beginning led Fielding to declare that he would “trouble the World no more with any Children of mine by the same Muse” (Covent-Garden, 28 January 1752, 66). 4 Whether he actually intended to, or whether it was a consequence of his death less than three years afterwards, Fielding remained true to his word. He redirected his creative energies to The Covent-Garden Journal, his last journalistic venture; he continued his work as a magistrate, and he focussed on his Universal Register Office, an employment agency of sorts that he co-founded with his half-brother John Fielding. 5 In the final months of his life, he wrote A Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon, a short account of the ill-fated journey that the Fieldings undertook to Portugal in the hope that a warmer climate would improve the writer’s health. 6
