INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION
Jonathan Wild, born about 1682 and executed at Tyburn in 1725, was
one of the most notorious criminals of his age. His resemblance to
the hero in Fielding's satire of the same name is general rather
than particular. The real Jonathan (whose legitimate business was
that of a buckle-maker) like Fielding's, won his fame, not as a
robber himself, but as an informer, and a receiver of stolen
goods. His method was to restore these to the owners on receipt of
a commission, which was generally pretty large, pretending that he
had paid the whole of it to the thieves, whom for disinterested
motives he had traced. He was a great organiser, and he controlled
various bands of robbers whose lives he did not hesitate to
sacrifice, when his own was in danger. Naturally he was so hated
by many of his underlings that it is a wonder he was able to
maintain his authority over them as many years as he did. His
rascality had been notorious a long time before his crimes could
actually be proved. He was executed at last according to the
statute which made receivers of stolen goods equally guilty with
the stealers.
Beyond this general resemblance, the adventures of the real
Jonathan, so far as we know them, are not much like those of the
fictitious. True, the real Jonathan's married life was unhappy,
though his quarrel with his wife did not follow so hard upon his
wedding as the quarrel of Fielding's hero and the chaste Laetitia.
Not until a year from his marriage did the real Jonathan separate
from his spouse, after which time he lived, like Fielding's, not
always mindful of his vows of faithfulness. Like Fielding's, too,
he was called upon to suppress rebellions in his gangs, and once
he came very near being killed in a court of justice by one Blake,
alias Blueskin. Apart from these misadventures, the experiences of
Fielding's Wild seem to be purely imaginary. "My narrative is
rather of such actions which he might have performed," the author
himself says, [Footnote: Introduction to Miscellanies, 1st ed., p.
xvii.] "or would, or should have performed, than what he really
did. ... The Life and Actions of the Late Jonathan Wild, got out
with characteristic commercial energy by Defoe, soon after the
criminal's execution, is very different from Fielding's satirical
narrative, and probably a good deal nearer the truth."
Jonathan Wild was published as the third volume of the
Miscellanies "by Henry Fielding, Esq." which came out in the
spring of 1743. From the reference to Lady Booby's steward, Peter
Pounce, in Book II., it seems to have been, as Mr. Austin Dobson
has observed, and as the date of publication would imply, composed
in part at least subsequently to Joseph Andrews, which appeared
early in 1742. But the same critic goes on to say that whenever
completed, Jonathan Wild was probably "planned and begun before
Joseph Andrews was published, as it is in the highest degree
improbable that Fielding, always carefully watching the public
taste, would have followed up that fortunate adventure in a new
direction by a work so entirely different from it as Jonathan
Wild." [Footnote: Henry Fielding, 1900, p. 145.] Mr. Dobson's
surmise is undoubtedly correct. The "strange, surprising
adventures" of Mrs. Heartfree belong to a different school of
fiction from that with which we commonly associate Fielding. They