Sarah Fielding (1710–1768)

Sarah Fielding was the daughter of a military officer, and the younger sister of novelist Henry Fielding. She and their sisters were educated at a boarding school in Salisbury after their mother's death and their father’s remarriage in 1719. Their maternal grandmother, Lady Gould, was so opposed to the second marriage that she sued for custody of her grandchildren and won. Sarah contributed to her brother’s work Joseph Andrews (1742), and then began to write her own novels, the most famous of which was The Adventures of David Simple (1744). She also wrote The Governess, or the Little Female Academy (1749), which was one of the earliest books written especially for young girls. Sarah was a close friend of Jane Collier, and the two women collaborated to publish The Cry: A New Dramatic Fable (1754). Sarah Fielding also produced a translation of Xenophon’s’ Memoirs of Socrates (1762), the only one of her many works published under her own name.