“A comic writer should of all others be the least excused for deviating from nature, since it may not be always so easy for a serious poet to meet with the great and the admirable; but life every where furnishes an accurate observer with the ridiculous.”

—  Henry Fielding , book Joseph Andrews

Author's Preface
Joseph Andrews (1742)

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Henry Fielding 70
English novelist and dramatist 1707–1754

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