Conclusion

Andrew Millar did what he could to promote The History of the Countess of Dellwyn. A month after its publication, he arranged for an excerpt entitled “The Adventures of Mrs. Bilson” to be published in the London Chronicle. The same selection was later reprinted in Newcastle General Magazine. ¹ His efforts, however, were not enough to justify a second edition of the novel, and Fielding never received the forty guineas such a venture would have provided. In order to support herself, she needed to continue to write. In November 1759, she published proposals for subscriptions for her forthcoming translation of Xenophon in Boddley’s Bath Journal and The Bath Advertiser. By December 1759, she had translated The Defense of Socrates, before his Judges, which comprises the final twenty-one pages of the translation. ² She promised her subscribers the finished volume by April 1761, but it was delayed because of her illness. When the work was finally published in January 1762, there were 707 recorded subscriptions at 6s per copy, the same price as The History of the Countess of Dellwyn. If all of those subscriptions were honored, they would pay Fielding a handsome £212. 2s before printing costs. ³ Fielding’s letters demonstrate that she worked diligently on the translation, frequently seeking Harris’s assistance and striving always to make her work as accurate as possible. Although she made steady progress, it was an enormous project that took several years to complete, almost certainly leaving her strapped for cash as she toiled to make the Greek language, culture and philosophy understandable for an eighteenth-century British audience.