Fielding's life is peculiarly relevant to criticism of his work since one of the chief accusations levelled at him by rivals like Richardson was that his writing was autobiographical – he was a mere reporter, with no invention or genius. What was more, it was alleged that his subjects were invariably ‘low’ and vulgar, in keeping with the way he lived. Biographical fact thus becomes a facet of literary theory, of arguments about the nature and purpose of imaginative representation.

Henry Fielding was born in 1707 at Sharpham Park, Somerset, within sight of Glastonbury Tor – part of the setting for Tom Jones – but when he was 3 his family moved to East Stour, in Dorset. It was the estate here, running through meadows to the river, that he always thought of as home. Biographers like to suggest that Fielding's paradoxical blend of probity and wildness, striving and hedonism, was somehow bred into his genes. His mother, Sarah, was the daughter of a judge, and her family, the Goulds, were oldestablished Somerset gentry, while the Fieldings, who traced their line (falsely) back to the Hapsburgs, were notoriously intemperate and unpredictable.

Henry's father, Edmund Fielding, was an attractive, reckless soldier who eventually reached the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel, but was renowned for his gambling, womanizing, and debts. Henry was the first of eight children, but Edmund spent more time in London coffee-houses than with his growing family, and soon after Sarah died in 1718 he married the keeper of a London eating-house, an Italian, Roman Catholic widow. The Goulds were aghast, fearful of her Popish influence (the Jacobite invasion of 1715 still haunted English minds). After fierce court battles, Henry's grandmother Lady Gould won custody of the children. Henry, aged 12, was sent to Eton – which he refers to in his novels as much for its fierce beatings as for its teaching of the Classics.

Fielding would always be drawn to the ‘foundlings’ of this world, and sensitive to the duties and aberrances of fathers. He was also determined, sometimes arrogantly so, to make his own way. He remained nostalgically fond of East Stour, but was so hopeless with money that he threw this inheritance away. As a youth he was loving and hot-tempered: in 1725, a year after leaving Eton, he fell precipitously in love with a distant relative, Sarah Andrew, whom he pursued to Lyme Regis.