Reviewed by:

• A Political Biography of Sarah Fielding by Christopher D. Johnson
• Linda Bree, PhD, editor researcher (bio)

Christopher D. Johnson is disarmingly honest about the formidable difficulties he faced in his task of adding a study of Sarah Fielding to the Routledge Eighteenth-Century Political Biographies series. He cites firstly “the paucity of available biographical information” about Fielding and then “the author’s apparent lack of interest in politics” (1); turning to her work, he acknowledges that, since she was a collaborative writer, it is often difficult to be sure which words are hers, and since she wrote primarily to alleviate financial distress (“Perhaps the best Excuse that can be made for a Woman’s venturing to write at all,” as she declared in the “Advertisement to the Reader” at the head of her first novel The Adventures of David Simple [1744]), the form and content of her writings might well have been compromised by commercial pressures.

From such unpromising beginnings, Johnson goes on to offer a full and perceptive account of Sarah Fielding and her work. In the process, he even challenges critics who argue for political readings of one or another of Fielding’s narratives, such as the implications of her use of the word “commonwealth,” or that there is a relationship between The Lives of Cleopatra and Octavia and the beginnings of the Seven Years’ War. Johnson concludes that for Fielding the political becomes personal, or at least interpersonal, and he offers convincing arguments for the value of this understanding in her writings.

Fielding’s work has always resisted easy definition. If David Simple is clearly a novel (indeed, one of the most prominent fictions of its time), the same cannot be said of its successor, Familiar Letters between the Principal Characters in David Simple and Some Others (1747), a miscellany of moral essays, mostly presented in the form of epistolary exchanges. Fielding subsequently penned, alongside more novels, a text for children, at least two pamphlets of literary criticism (one of which was only discovered [End Page 319] recently: it is tantalizing to think there may be more), a jointly authored “dramatic fable,” a fictionalized autobiography, and a translation from Greek. Johnson moves chronologically through her life and career, with necessary emphasis on the work, since information about the life remains sparse. He offers particularly valuable new insights into Familiar Letters, which, as he points out, has rarely been considered by scholars, and on The Cry (1754), about which, after reviewing the available evidence of a collaboration between Fielding and her friend Jane Collier, he concludes that Fielding had the “artistic vision” (186), with Collier taking a subordinate, perhaps largely editorial role. More controversially, he argues that Fielding’s claim to be the editor rather than the author of The History of Ophelia (1760)—having, as she declared, found the manuscript in “an old Buroe” (256)—probably reflects the truth rather than literary convention: his careful assessment of the internal evidence supporting this view, coming after chapters devoted to Fielding’s other works, is persuasive.

Johnson finds a high level of consistency in terms of aims and themes across Fielding’s writings in all their different forms. He argues that Fielding is always concerned with how men and women can find happi ness in this world—an aim entirely compatible with Christian belief, but in a framework of practical action rather than faith, and with strikingly little consideration of any life to come—and that she sees the prospect of such happiness as threatened, above all, by “passion,” which for her means the self-centred and self-deceiving errors of pride and vanity. She shows how right-thinking only comes about through honest self-examination and self-knowledge. And she appropriates other literary texts, demonstrating how narratives can legitimately be rewritten by people thinking and analyzing for themselves (a rather clever argument on Johnson’s part, countering claims, made during Fielding’s lifetime and since, that her growing habit of extensive literary quotation was a form of padding).

The contradictions in Fielding’s philosophy also receive attention. Johnson...

审核人：

• 克里斯托弗·约翰逊（Christopher D.Johnson）撰写的莎拉·菲尔丁（Sarah Fielding）的政治传记
• Linda Bree博士，编辑研究员（生物）

克里斯托弗·约翰逊（Christopher D. Johnson）对他在将《莎拉·菲尔丁》（Sarah Fielding）的研究添加到Routledge 18世纪政治传记系列的任务中所面临的巨大困难感到宽容。他首先引用了关于菲尔丁的“很少的可用传记信息”，然后引用了“作者对政治的明显缺乏兴趣”（1）。谈到她的工作，他承认，由于她是一位协作作家，因此通常很难确定她是哪个单词，而且由于她主要是为了减轻财务困境而写的（“也许对于女性而言，这是最好的借口）。正如她在第一本小说《大卫·斯普林斯历险记》开头的“给读者的广告”中所宣称的那样。 [1744]），她的著作的形式和内容很可能已经受到商业压力的损害。

从这种毫无希望的开端开始，约翰逊就对莎拉·菲尔丁（Sarah Fielding）和她的作品进行了全面而敏锐的叙述。在这个过程中，他甚至挑战谁主张一种或另一种Fielding的叙述，比如她用字的含义政治读数批评“联邦”或有之间的关系埃及艳后的生活，明锐和七年战争的开始。约翰逊得出的结论是，对于菲尔丁而言，政治成为个人的，或者至少是人际交往的，他在她的著作中就这种理解的价值提出了令人信服的论据。

菲尔丁的工作始终拒绝简单定义。如果大卫·斯普林（David Simple）显然是一本小说（确实是当时最著名的小说之一），那么其继任者《大卫·斯普林与其他一些人的主要人物之间的熟悉的信》（1747年）就不能说相同了，这是道德的杂项。散文，大多以书信交换的形式呈现。随后，菲尔丁（Fielding）和更多小说一起为儿童写了一部文字，至少有两本文学批评小册子（其中只有一本被发现[完第319页]最近：令人着迷的是，可能还会有更多），合着的《戏剧寓言》，虚构的自传和希腊语译本。由于有关生活的信息仍然稀疏，约翰逊按时间顺序在她的生活和职业生涯中进行了移动，并特别强调了工作。他提供了对“熟悉的信件”的特别有价值的新见解，正如他指出的那样，学者们和《哭泣》都很少考虑到这一点。（1754），在回顾了菲尔丁（Fielding）和她的朋友简·科利尔（Jane Collier）之间合作的现有证据之后，他得出结论，菲尔丁具有“艺术视野”（186），而科利尔（Collier）则是下属，也许主要是编辑角色。更具争议性的是，他认为菲尔丁声称自己是《奥菲利亚的历史》（The History of Ophelia）（1760）的编辑，而不是她的作者，正如她宣称的那样，发现该手稿是在“一个古老的布罗（Buroe）”（256）中提出的，可能是事实的真实而非文学习惯：在对菲尔丁的其他著作进行了专门讨论之后，他对支持这种观点的内部证据进行了认真的评估，这很有说服力。

约翰逊在各种形式的菲尔丁作品的目的和主题方面都找到了高度的一致性。他认为，菲尔丁一直关注着男人和女人如何在这个世界上找到幸福-这一目标与基督教信仰完全相符，但是是在实际行动的框架中而不是信仰，并且几乎没有考虑到未来的生活-她认为幸福的前景首先受到“激情”的威胁，这对她来说意味着骄傲和虚荣的自我中心和自我欺骗的错误。她展示了只有通过诚实的自省和自知才能正确思考。她还引用了其他文学作品，

菲尔丁哲学中的矛盾也受到关注。约翰逊...