Despite his slender literary output and his untimely death at the age of only twenty-eight, Francis Coventry has earned a lasting place in the history of the eighteenth-century English novel. The nature of his contribution can perhaps best be inferred from the fact that The History of Pompey the Little; or, The Life and Adventures of a Lap-Dog (1751), written professedly in imitation of Henry Fielding, was one of only two novels found in the latter's library after his death in 1754 (Charlotte Lennox's 1752 novel The Female Quixote was the other). Thus, if imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, Fielding repaid Coventry's emulation with a high compliment of his own. As an imitator of Fielding, Coventry is hardly unique; but he distinguishes himself from Fielding's other followers both by the variety and liveliness of his writing and by his awareness of the formal and moral purposes of Fielding's art...