A foundling is raised by a country squire, thrown out on a false charge, and walks to London through inns, highwaymen and a rebellion, with the girl he wants engaged to someone else. Fielding was a magistrate who founded London's first police force, and the book is arranged like a case: eighteen books, each opening with an essay to the reader. It was called immoral for a century because the hero is not chaste. Sixty plates after Hogarth and Gainsborough, from portraits to wooded landscapes and country churches, give a face to the England the foundling crosses on foot.
