Henry Fielding's 1749 novel follows a foundling through picaresque adventures, love affairs, and discoveries of identity across hundreds of pages that pioneered what the novel could do. Fielding calls himself a historian, mocks his own narrative conventions, and creates a work that is both entertainment and theory of entertainment. The plot is elaborate; the prose is witty; the morality is generous. Coleridge called it one of the three most perfect plots ever planned. The novel invented the English novel.