Honest Sins: Georgian Libertinism and the Plays and Novels of Henry Fielding

Originally cruel, manipulative, and self-serving, during the eighteenth century the Restoration rake evolved into a more cheerful sinner: the good-natured libertine. While Tom Jones was Henry Fielding's most complete embodiment of this new ideal, Tiffany Potter shows that the revised Georgian libertinism informs and illuminates all of his work.