Sarah Fielding (review)

Sarah Fielding is well known to historians of children’s literature as the author of The Governess or, Little Female Academy, published in 1749. The book was immediately popular and went through numerous editions before the end of the century (at least ten), including German and Swedish translations (Grey 357). The Governess is now considered “the earliest known full length novel written specially for young people, [and] the first school story for girls” (Cadogan vii).

Yet it is not only for her creation of a significant children’s book that Sarah Fielding, or—as she is more generally known—“the sister of Henry Fielding,” should be remembered. In a highly readable new study, Linda Bree presents Sarah Fielding as a popular, innovative, and creative writer who was respected by her contemporaries. Although Sarah Fielding has been the object of increasing interest in recent years, Bree’s book is the first full-length critical study of her life and works.

As Bree observes, Sarah’s association with two eighteenth-century literary giants, her brother Henry and her close friend, Samuel Richardson, has been a mixed blessing. Although her own literary reputation has been overshadowed as a result, her affiliations with these men have meant that Sarah has received considerably more attention from literary historians and critics than many women writers of her day, and continuing interest in Henry Fielding and Richardson has helped to uncover many details about Sarah’s life (1).

Recent research has benefited Sarah in other ways. Feminist and historical scholarship have contributed to a new appreciation of Sarah’s life and work by offering diverse perspectives on eighteenth-century women writers, their networks, roles, and audiences. Bree’s study is consistent with these new directions in scholarship—she carefully examines the social and cultural context in which Sarah worked and assiduously avoids a presentist interpretation of the author’s didactic fiction. Bree looks beyond Sarah’s associations with her brother and Richardson to her friendships with other female writers and demonstrates an understanding of the “complicated network of collaboration and mutual influence in which Sarah Fielding played an important part” (viii). Through close textual analysis, Bree illustrates the ways in which Sarah often used the conventional didactic form to present a radical message.

Bree’s first chapter, which introduces Sarah Fielding as “A Woman of Singular Energy, Learning, and Ability,” is a graceful account of the circumstances of Sarah’s early life, education, and associations. Readers are reminded that no full-length biography of Sarah Fielding exists because too little is known about long stretches of her life. Nonetheless, Bree provides a concise but thorough overview of what is known about the author, incorporating the views of Sarah’s contemporaries, as well as those of modern scholars. Although she notes Sarah’s dependence on her brother for financial support (this was the norm for unmarried women of Sarah’s class), she stresses the author’s strength of purpose and independence. Sarah, like many of her male counterparts, wrote for money but also because she had something to say. Bree argues that Sarah’s interest in language, the relationship between words and their meanings, and her willingness to experiment with various literary forms indicate that Sarah Fielding was indeed a singular woman. Bree’s remaining chapters consist of detailed analysis and discussion of Sarah’s known published works, which include a moral romance, a philosophical novel, a collection of letters, moral essays, stories and original poems, a pamphlet of literary criticism, a historical novel, and a translation of a classical Greek text.

According to Bree, Sarah’s popular first novel, The Adventures of David Simple (1744), “represents a fresh beginning for women writers” (8). The book effectively established Sarah’s reputation as a writer, and most of the fiction she wrote later was labeled By the Author of David Simple. For modern readers, David Simple, the story of a man’s journey through London in search of a true friend, offers a realistic picture of London at the time, and a perceptive critique of eighteenth-century sensibilities...