Details
FIELDING HENRY. Autograph manuscript in which Fielding discusses (with citations from law books) various legal aspects of felony. [London, ca. 1745?]. One page, square small 8vo, about 125 words in 11 lines, left-hand corners a trifle chipped, the others with traces of mounting on verso; inscribed at bottom: "I certify the above to be the Handwriting of Henry Fielding, Author of Tom Jones, etc. W.H. Fielding, grandson of the above." In fine condition.
Possibly notes for or a fragment of the unfinished and unpublished manuscript, An Institute of the Pleas of the Crown (ca. 1745), a "two-volume work by fielding [which] survives only in fragments, which his grandson W.H. Fielding dispersed on the nineteenth-century autograph market" (Hugh Amory, New Books by Fielding: An Exhibition of the Hyde Collection, Cambridge: The Houghton Library, 1987, no. 30).
"When Walpole imposed his theatrical licensing act in 1737, the former dramatic satirist enrolled at the Middle Temple. Needless to say, Fielding approached his legal career with the same energy he had applied to his dramatic career. Lawbooks began to pile up and manuscript extracts and notebooks based on them began to multiply...Manuscripts by Fielding are unusually scarce, and of those that survive, the most important are legal in nature" -- British Literary Manuscripts. Series I: from 800 to 1800, New York: The Pierpont Morgan Library in association with Dover Publications, 1981, no. 90 (illustrating and describing a page from "Of Outlawry in Criminal Cases" in An Institute of the Pleas of the Crown - this chapter, in the Hyde Collection, being the largest surviving Fielding manuscript). (Milne)
Possibly notes for or a fragment of the unfinished and unpublished manuscript, An Institute of the Pleas of the Crown (ca. 1745), a "two-volume work by fielding [which] survives only in fragments, which his grandson W.H. Fielding dispersed on the nineteenth-century autograph market" (Hugh Amory, New Books by Fielding: An Exhibition of the Hyde Collection, Cambridge: The Houghton Library, 1987, no. 30).
"When Walpole imposed his theatrical licensing act in 1737, the former dramatic satirist enrolled at the Middle Temple. Needless to say, Fielding approached his legal career with the same energy he had applied to his dramatic career. Lawbooks began to pile up and manuscript extracts and notebooks based on them began to multiply...Manuscripts by Fielding are unusually scarce, and of those that survive, the most important are legal in nature" -- British Literary Manuscripts. Series I: from 800 to 1800, New York: The Pierpont Morgan Library in association with Dover Publications, 1981, no. 90 (illustrating and describing a page from "Of Outlawry in Criminal Cases" in An Institute of the Pleas of the Crown - this chapter, in the Hyde Collection, being the largest surviving Fielding manuscript). (Milne)