#the history of tom jones a foundling

[holly-mckenzie]

You and me and the world before us... And I cannot live in it without you.

Solly McLeod & Sophie Wilde in TOM JONES (2023)

[blackinperiodfilms]

Solly McLeod as Tom Jones and Sophie Wilde as Sophia Western in PBS's Masterpiece TV adaptation of Henry Fielding's classic novel, Tom Jones. 

Premiering on PBS's Masterpiece in 2023.

[copiouscouples]

Thoughts on Tom Jones (2023) after 2 Episodes

It is very prettily done. The costumes and cast are gorgeous. It is a pleasant enough miniseries. The chemistry between the two leads is there and there is humor, but I think it’s a bit too fast-paced. Certain plot points aren’t given enough time to resonate with the audience. 

I think this may be a similar case to those who prefer the 2005 Pride and Prejudice movie over the BBC miniseries. I feel like one of the common critiques of the miniseries is that it’s too slow and not enough action occurs, but the film focused on the main plot points and was fast-paced. 

I, however, am the opposite. I love a slow burn. I love to see the development and build up. The 1990s Tom Jones was 6 episodes long. We got to see more of the background of Sophia and Tom’s friendship as children and just many of the plot points in general were given more time.

And this may be because I’ve already seen the 90s miniseries, but I don’t have a “what happens next feeling” as I watch. I was in middle school when I watched it for the first time and remember being so frustrated when they ended an episode with a cliffhanger. I feel like this miniseries lacks a lot of suspense.

I don’t hate this version by any means and fully intend to finish it, but where as I’d rate the 90s miniseries a 9/9.5 - I’d probably rate this one a 6.5 or 7. For me, the romance between the two leads is there but the other elements - the fun and adventure, the wit, the suspense - are sorely lacking.

If you have Amazon Prime, the 90s miniseries is available for free. I’d highly recommend watching it. It is rated 16+ on Prime for some bare behinds and sexual stuff.

[mightymizora]

I don't often talk on here about that many passions outside of D&D but inspired by a very brief exchange by @plethomacademia I want to talk very briefly about my great love for period dramas.

I'm a particular fan of Georgian era and Victorian era (but you know, every gal of a certain age had their brain chemistry altered by the 1995 Pride and Prejudice as Greta Gerwig knows well) so I wanted to talk very, very briefly about some of my absolute favourites (and whether the adaptation or the book has my heart)

Poldark. The books and the 1975 version, not the modern version (I liked the Elizabeth, wasn't a fan of the rest.) Poldark man. It's the ONE. Incredibly romantic, but with a real political agenda too around landowners rights and the changing role of the gentry. The books were hugely formative for me - and there's LOADS, so get them from your local library and enjoy.

The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling. The book, and the delightful 1997 BBC adaptation. I love this book. It's one of those early novels where the narrator just fucking talks about whatever they want. And because it's set in the earlier Georgian era where people did whatever they wanted, it's super sexy. Tom is basically fucking his way through the West Country and London.

Vanity Fair. The book, I've not liked any of the adaptations I've seen. Becky Sharp, beloved. The first real antihero I read. I love her to the ends of the earth. All adaptations try and soften her too much for my liking but the 1998 and 2018 both have good strengths.

The House of Mirth. The book and the 2000's film. Just sublime.

Anna Karenina. One of my favourite books. Western adaptations of Russian novels never quite hit the mark but I have to give a shout out to the 2000 version with Helen McCrory because she really sold the sexual obsession to me in a way others didn't. Man, she was the GOAT.

North and South. The book is great. The adaptation really is superb. Probably the best on the list, one that I would rank just as highly as the novel.

Wives and Daughters. The book was unfinished so they filled in a lot of gaps in the 1999 adaptation starring Justine Waddell (who incidentally was in EVERYTHING for a while? Like every period drama cast her, it was bizarre, and then she just disappeared. This also stars Keeley Hawes who was also in everything, including the very underrated Our Mutual Friend.) I know this one isn't the best, but I'm very fond of it.

Middlemarch. Listen, the book is the greatest book of all time to me. You have to read it at least once. The 1994 adaptation does a great job but it will never be the book, whose strands come together so perfectly, which teaches us so much about the intricate webs of being human.

The Crimson Petal and the White. The book is extraordinary, and the 2011 adaptation tries its best but suffers a bit from some odd casting. Still it's very worth the watch.

I Claudius. Curveball lmao. But it's perfect. Utterly perfect. The cultural impact of the 1976 adaptation can't be understated. A masterpiece.

[13eyond13]

How many of these "Top 100 Books to Read" have you read?

(633) 1984 - George Orwell

(616) The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald

(613) The Catcher In The Rye - J.D. Salinger

(573) Crime And Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

(550) Catch-22 - Joseph Heller

(549) The Adventures Of Tom And Huck - Series - Mark Twain

(538) Moby-Dick - Herman Melville

(534) One Hundred Years Of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

(527) To Kill A Mockingbird - Harper Lee

(521) The Grapes Of Wrath - John Steinbeck

(521) Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov

(492) Pride And Prejudice - Jane Austen

(489) The Lord Of The Rings - Series - J.R.R. Tolkien

(488) Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

(480) Ulysses - James Joyce

(471) Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte

(459) Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte

(398) The Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

(396) Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

(395) To The Lighthouse - Virginia Woolf

(382) War And Peace - Leo Tolstoy

(382) The Sun Also Rises - Ernest Hemingway

(380) The Sound And The Fury - William Faulkner

(378) Alice's Adventures In Wonderland - Series - Lewis Carroll

(359) Frankenstein - Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

(353) Heart Of Darkness - Joseph Conrad

(352) Middlemarch - George Eliot

(348) Animal Farm - George Orwell

(346) Don Quixote - Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

(334) Slaughterhouse-Five - Kurt Vonnegut

(325) Les Misérables - Victor Hugo

(320) Harry Potter - Series - J.K. Rowling

(320) The Chronicles Of Narnia - Series - C.S. Lewis

(317) Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy

(308) Lord Of The Flies - William Golding

(306) Invisible Man - Ralph Ellison

(289) The Golden Bowl - Henry James

(276) Pale Fire - Vladimir Nabokov

(266) Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell

(260) The Count Of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas

(255) The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy - Series - Douglas Adams

(252) The Life And Opinions Of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman - Laurence Sterne

(244) Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert

(237) Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackery

(235) The Trial - Franz Kafka

(233) Absalom, Absalom! - William Faulkner

(232) The Call Of The Wild - Jack London

(232) Emma - Jane Austen

(229) Beloved - Toni Morrison

(228) Little Women - Louisa May Alcott

(224) A Passage To India - E.M. Forster

(215) Dune - Frank Herbert

(215) A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man - James Joyce

(212) The Stranger - Albert Camus

(209) One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kesey

(209) The Idiot - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

(206) Dracula - Bram Stoker

(205) The Picture Of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde

(197) A Confederacy Of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole

(193) Mrs. Dalloway - Virginia Woolf

(193) The Age Of Innocence - Edith Wharton

(193) The History Of Tom Jones, A Foundling - Henry Fielding

(192) Under The Volcano - Malcolm Lowry

(190) The Odyssey - Homer

(189) Gulliver's Travels - Jonathan Swift

(188) In Search Of Lost Time - Marcel Proust

(186) Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie

(185) An American Tragedy - Theodore Dreiser

(182) The Book Thief - Markus Zusak

(180) Siddhartha - Hermann Hesse

(179) The Magic Mountain - Thomas Mann

(178) Things Fall Apart - Chinua Achebe

(178) Tropic Of Cancer - Henry Miller

(176) The Outsiders - S.E. Hinton

(176) On The Road - Jack Kerouac

(175) The Little Prince - Antoine de Saint-Exupery

(173) The Giver - Lois Lowry

(172) Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh

(172) A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess

(171) Charlotte's Web - E.B. White

(171) The Ambassadors - Henry James

(170) Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace

(167) The Complete Stories And Poems - Edgar Allen Poe

(166) Ender's Saga - Series - Orson Scott Card

(165) In Cold Blood - Truman Capote

(164) The Wings Of The Dove - Henry James

(163) The Adventures Of Augie March - Saul Bellow

(162) As I Lay Dying - William Faulkner

(161) The Hunger Games - Series - Suzanne Collins

(158) Anne Of Greene Gables - L.M. Montgomery

(157) Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand

(157) Neuromancer - William Gibson

(156) The Help - Kathryn Stockett

(156) A Song Of Ice And Fire - George R.R. Martin

(155) The Good Soldier - Ford Madox Ford

(154) The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown

(153) I, Claudius - Robert Graves

(152) Wide Sargasso Sea - Jean Rhys

(151) The Portrait Of A Lady - Henry James

(150) The Death Of The Heart - Elizabeth Bowen

[wildwren]

TOM JONES (2023) // THE HISTORY OF TOM JONES, A FOUNDLING (1749)

[ladyfenring]

Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones, A Foundling

for @wildwren💛

[emcads]

i present to you:  the great tpof fancast

Christophe-Julien de Rapièr :  Romain Duris, Molière  (2007)

Esmeralda Maria Consuela Anna de Sevilla:   Salma Hayek,   Fools Rush In (1997)  /  The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1997) 

Princess Amenirdis :   Aamito Lagum,  Three Thousand Years of Longing (2022)

Prince Shabako: Malachi Kirby,  Roots  (2016)

Pharaoh Taharka : Idris Elba, Thor: Ragnarok (2017)

Queen Tiyy: Yetide Badaki, American Gods (2017-2021)

Tarek: Abubakar Salim, Jamestown (2017) 

Piye: Danny Glover,  Age of the Dragons (2011)

Chamba:  Paulo Andre Aragao, The Lost Pirate Kingdom (2021)

Lord Reginald Marmaduke Bracegirdle-Penwallow: Charles Dance, The Great Fire (2014)

Don Rafael : Edward James Olmos, Monday Nights at Seven (2016)

Luis Montoya :  Riccardo Scamarcio,  Caravaggio’s Shadow (2022)

Robby Greene: Dean O'Gorman, Return to Treasure Island (1996)

The Becketts.  Jonathan Jr.: Luke Roberts, Black Sails (2014),   Bartholomew : Tom Felton, Belle (2013), Jonathan Beckett: Michael McElhatton, Dangerous Liaisons (2022)

Cutler Beckett: Jonny Lee Miller, Plunkett & Macleane (1999)

Jane Beckett:  Sarah Gadon, Belle (2013)

Ian Mercer: Sebastian Armesto, Harlots (2017)

Melinda:  Clare Danes,  Stage Beauty (2004)

Boris Palachnik :  Ned Dennehy, Banished (2015)

Frank Connery : Tristan Sturrock, Poldark (2015)

Etienne de Ver:  Edouard Baer, Lady J (2018)

Lucius Featherstone:  Henry Douthwaite, Wuthering Heights (2018)

Steve Seymour :  Dean Lennox Kelly, Jamestown (2017)

Marie Seymour :  Astrid Bergès-Frisbey,  Bruc (2017)

Jack :  Johnny Depp, The Man Who Cried  (2001)

bonus section:

Sean Bean as a young pirate Bootstrap Bill, Lorna Doone (1990)

 Lawrence Norrington as Ralph Fiennes in The Duchess (2008)

Fitzwilliam P. Dalton III: Max Beesley, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling (1997)

Tiny James Norrington : Keven Zegers, Treasure Island (1999).  Slightly larger James Norrington: Keven Zegers,  Felicity: An American Girl Adventure (2005)

[fuckyeahcostumedramas]

Samantha Morton as Sophia Western in ‘The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling‘ (TV Mini-Series, 1997).

[gaast]

Anyway. Read these fuckin. Books. Or poems. (listed in no particular order)

Death Comes for the Archbishop, Willa Cather

To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf

One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez

Catch-22, Joseph Heller

Troilus and Cressida, William Shakespeare

"As kingfishers catch fire," Gerard Manley Hopkins

The Temple, George Herbert

The History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless, Eliza Haywood

The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, Henry Fielding

Moby-Dick; or, The White Whale, Herman Melville

Absalom, Absalom!, William Faulkner

Malloy, Samuel Beckett

Foe, J. M. Coetzee

A Journal of the Plague Year, Daniel Defoe (placed at this point in the list for the irony factor)

How to Set a Fire and Why, Jesse Ball

The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, Laurence Sterne

Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison

The Stranger, Albert Camus

The Flies, Jean-Paul Sartre

Oresteia, Aeschylus

[holly-mckenzie]

Once upon a time there lived a boy from nowhere and a girl from the other side of the world. We could just live happily ever after, but I would have no story to tell.

TOM JONES (2023) coming to PBS in April 2023

[thedoctorlivesey]

Good day, Doctor! What, apart from Treasure Island, are some other books and stories you would highly suggest?

Oh, there are so many to choose from!

Perhaps Gulliver's Travels? Or The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling?

[copiouscouples]

Finished the last episodes of Tom Jones

And I’m not mad at it.

I still prefer the 90s miniseries, but this show had a different spin and a different viewpoint that I appreciated.

Random Thoughts:

This version seems more dramatic than the 90s one.

I strongly prefer Tom’s mom in this version. She seems more motherly. Although the lack of discussion about his dad was a choice. That and Blifil’s ambiguous ending made me think this show might get another season.

Speaking of that, one internet site said there would be a second season. It’s not a site I’ve heard of before so it might be useless gossip, but that might explain why those strings were left untied.

I didn’t like Sophia not making Tom wait the year. He had been a bit slutty and he needed to prove to her that he could wait.

The whole vibe between her and Honor was weird for this time period. Theirs was more of a friendship than a lady/maid dynamic.

I said it in my last post, but I’ll say it again - this miniseries was too fast-paced. It needed to slow down to fully flesh out storylines.

I’m not sorry I watched it, but I probably won’t watch it again. However, I would likely tune in to a second season just to see where they go with it.

[sam42]

Con as Captain Blifil in The History of Tom Jones: A Foundling (1995)

All credit for these go to @con_oneillstan on Twitter!

Two more videos coming as well!

[spudlanyon]

for my purposes, the referenced texts E.M. Forster made in his book, The Aspects of the Novel.

William George Clark. Gazpacho: Or Summer Months in Spain. —. Peloponnesus: Notes of Study and Travel. —. The Works of William Shakespeare - Cambridge Edition. —. The Present Dangers of the Church of England. John Bunyan. The Pilgrim's Progress. Walter Pater. Marius the Epicurean. Edward John Trelawny. Adventures of a Younger Son. Daniel Defoe. A Journal of the Plague Year. —. Robinson Crusoe. —. Moll Flanders. Max Beerbohm. Zuleika Dobson. Samuel Johnson. The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia. James Joyce. Ulysses. —. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. William Henry Hudson. Green Mansions. Herman Melville. Moby Dick. —. "Billy Budd". Elizabeth Gaskell. Cranford (followed by My Lady Ludlow, and Mr. Harrison's Confessions). Charlotte Brontë. Jane Eyre. —. Shirley. —. Villette. Sir Walter Scott. The Heart of Midlothian (part of the Waverley Novels). —. The Antiquary (part of the Waverley Novels). —. The Bride of Lammermoor (part of the Waverley Novels). George Meredith. The Ordeal of Richard Feverel. —. The Egoist. —. Evan Harrington. —. The Adventures of Harry Richmond. —. Beauchamp's Career. Leo Tolstoy. War and Peace. Fyodor Dostoevsky. The Brothers Karamazov. William Shakespeare. King Lear. Henry Fielding. The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling. —. Joseph Andrews. Henry De Vere Stacpoole. The Blue Lagoon (part of a trilogy; followed by The Garden of God and The Gates of Morning). Clayton Meeker Hamilton. Materials and Methods of Fiction. George Eliot. The Mill on the Floss. —. Adam Bede. Robert Louis Stevenson. The Master of Ballantrae. Edward Bulwer-Lytton. The Last Days of Pompeii. Charles Dickens. Great Expectations. —. Our Mutual Friend. —. Bleak House. Laurence Stern. The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman. Virginia Woolf. To the Lighthouse. T. S. Eliot. The Sacred Wood.

One Thousand and One Nights. Emily Brontë. Wuthering Heights. Charles Percy Sanger. The Structure of Wuthering Heights. Johan David Wyss. The Swiss Family Robinson. D. H. Lawrence. Women in Love. Arnold Bennett. The Old Wives' Tale. Anthony Trollope. The Last Chronicle of Barset. Jane Austen. Emma. —. Mansfield Park. —. Persuasion. H. G. Wells. Tono-Bungay. —. Boon. Gustave Flaubert. Madame Bovary. Percy Lubbock. The Craft of Fiction. —. Roman Pictures. André Gide. The Counterfeiters. Homer. Odyssey. Thomas Hardy. The Return of the Native. —. The Dynasts. —. Jude the Obscure. Anton Chekhov. The Cherry Orchard. Oliver Goldsmith. The Vicar of Wakefield. David Garnett. Lady Into Fox. Alexander Pope. The Rape of the Lock. Norman Matson. Flecker's Magic. Samuel Richardson. Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded. Anatole France. Thaïs. Henry James. The Ambassadors. —. The Spoils of Poynton. —. Portrait of a Lady. —. What Maisie Knew. —. The Wings of the Dove. Jean Racine. Plays.

I. A. Richards.

[wildwren]

Sophia + Tom + falling in love // part 1

Tom Jones (2023) // The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling by Henry Fielding (1749) *some quotes edited slightly for clarity