The history of Tom Jones by Henry Fielding; edited with explanatory notes by Thomas Keymer and Alice Wakely ; with an introduction by Thomas Keymer. The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, often known simply as Tom Jones, is a comic novel by English playwright and novelist Henry Fielding. It is a Bildungsroman and a picaresque novel. It was first published on 28 February 1749 in London and is among the earliest English works to be classified as a novel.