Jonathan Wild the Great

A hilarious black comedy of manners and morals, based on the crimes and career of a real-life 18th-century gangland criminal, Jonathan Wild the Great is one of the finest satires in the English language. Jonathan Wild is truly "great"—spurning the callow and spiritless ways of "lower" men, he walks his own path to fame and glory, by way of theft, fraud, and betrayal. Against a backdrop of such colorful characters as the whore Miss Molly Straddle, the cardsharp Count La Ruse, and the base and weak Mr. Thomas Heartfree, Wild's passage from cradle to gallows is recounted with a humor that belies the subtlety of the novel's ironic themes. Novelist and dramatist Henry Fielding is best known for his light-hearted novels and satires. His masterpiece, Tom Jones, is acknowledged as one of the finest novels in the English language.