"The History of Tom Jones, a foundling" by Henry Fielding and illustrated by G. Spencer Pryse - John Lane, London - 1930 first Pryse illustrated edition first printing- 20cmx15cm - condition: good, in original publisher's binding, some tanning to boards, all illustrations present. The artist's "Tom Jones drawings in pen and wash, and brush and ink were effective in a deceptively rough-and-ready style" (Peppin & Micklethwait). One of the great novels of the 18th century, this work, along with Joseph Andrews, "established the tradition of the comic novel in English" (ODNB). It was first published in 1749. An experimental writer who thoroughly ruffled the feathers of his contemporary literary establishment, Fielding is now "generally agreed to be an innovating master of the highest originality. He himself believed he was 'the founder of a new province of writing'. In breaking away from the epistolary method of his contemporary Richardson, and others, he devised what he described as 'comic epics in prose', which may be characterized as the first modern novels in English, leading straight to the works of Dickens and Thackeray" (Drabble, p. 360). Margaret Drabble, ed., The Oxford Companion To English Literature, 6th edn, 2000; Brigid Peppin & Lucy Micklethwait, Dictionary of British Book Illustrators: The Twentieth Century, 1983. Octavo (240 x 150 mm).