Tom Jones

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What Hacker News says

• TomDavey · Sep 16, 2015 · Recommends

  …Gibbon for failing to stand outside his historical period is not really fair. Or try the Federalist Papers, or anything written by the U.S. founding fathers. Same style. Even better, try Fielding's "Tom Jones." Prose as masterly as Gibbon's, but you'll laugh yourself silly at the ribald and bawdy humor, not equaled again until the 20th century. Gotta love the English Enlightenment.

  on “Edward Gibbon and the importance of great writing to great history” ↗
• hilbert42 · May 12, 2022 · Mentions

  …Spectator and so on. Also, I'd already be familiar with the literature of the time: the works of essayists, novelists and writers such as Samuel Johnson, Richard Steele, Joseph Addison, Henry Fielding of Tom Jones fame, Oliver Goldsmith, Abbé Aubert, Pierre Beaumarchais, Denis Diderot, Voltaire and many, many more—people who are still household names today. Moreover, these literati would soon pave the way for the…

  on “When Did the Medieval Period End?” ↗
• andrewl · Jan 14, 2012 · Mentions

  It's in the first sentence of Tom Jones, Axiak. I thought you knew that. An author ought to consider himself not as a gentleman who gives a private or eleemosynary treat, but rather as one who keeps a public ordinary at which all persons are…

  on “Snapshot: Viaweb, June 1998” ↗
• bsder · Nov 20, 2020 · Critical

  …"Yes, the books you are assigned to read in high school really ARE crap." "Tale of Two Cities" by Dickens is a wonderful book buried in a sea of irrelevant chapters he got paid by the word to write. "Tom Jones" is basically a 1749 soap opera. Anything modern (<30 years) is almost guaranteed to be crap. (Norma Fox Mazer was big when I was in school and was complete garbage in my estimation. A funny story…

  on “I read 100 books in the last 2 years – here are 10 thoughts on reading” ↗
• bsder · Aug 7, 2022 · Mentions

  …teachers don't actually read anything outside of their curriculum literature. The glory of English literature is that it varies widely. Want a swashbuckle? Got it--here's "Ivanhoe". Want a soap opera? "Tom Jones". All manner of surreal? Roald Dahl. Incredibly dark humor? Late Mark Twain. Even when someone says "I don't like author <X>.", if someone explains what they don't like, you can often find a different…

  on “On pretending to have read books” ↗
• saltcured · Dec 14, 2025 · Mentions

  …assigned books we read for class in either junior high or high school. I think there were more, but these are the ones I can recall easily today. Pride and Prejudice. Last of the Mohicans. A Separate Peace. Tom Jones. Beowulf. Grendel. Crime and Punishment. Waiting for Godot. Tale of Two Cities. Also, several Shakespeare plays, though I am no longer sure which were read when. We also had other reading assignments…

  on “Kids Rarely Read Whole Books Anymore. Even in English Class” ↗