Global InformationThe Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon information
 | This article may contain an excessive amount of intricate detail that may interest only a particular audience. (April 2024) |
 Galleon of imagination, perhaps similar to the Queen of Portugal by Tomasz Sienicki (2004) | |
| Editor | Andrew Millar |
|---|---|
| Author | Henry Fielding |
| Translator | Nathalie Bernard (with a preface by Jean Viviès) |
| Country | England |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Chronicle of a journey |
| Published | 1755 (posthumous work) |
| Pages | 186 |
| ISBN | 2853997359 |
| Preceded by | Amelia (novel) (1751), The Covent-Garden Journal (1752) |
The Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon (Journal d'un voyage de Londres à Lisbonne) is the last book written by Henry Fielding (1707-1754) when, ill and at the end of his tether, accompanied by his second wife Mary Daniel (Mary Fielding), one of his daughters Eleanor Harriot, the latter's friend Margaret Collier and two servants, the chambermaid Isabella Ash and the footman William, he set sail for Lisbon in the summer of 1754 aboard the Queen of Portugal. Subject to the whims of the commander and the vagaries of the weather, the ship, long deprived of wind, drifted up the Thames, then along the south coast, and it's only in the very last pages of the book that the sails swell and the real voyage begins. So, in many ways, Fielding's Diary is more about English shores and shores than about crossing the Bay of Biscay and arriving in Portugal.
This brief collection takes the form of a chronicle of day-to-day life, blending everyday anecdotes with a number of political and moral considerations about society and humanity in general. The tone is generally humorous, but there is a discreet stoicism in the face of suffering. Also included are numerous discussions about maritime law and, most importantly, Fielding's last action as a magistrate, a profession he has recently left by force of circumstance. The story is punctuated by a few witty portraits, some of which are not devoid of insular prejudice, but as in the novels, the picturesque is absent from the descriptions, which, with rare exceptions, follow the obligatory poetic language of the late 17th and early 18th centuries.
The irony flows through the book from page to page, directed against certain characters, but above all against the narrator, more parodic than frankly satirical, always comic. It draws on several English travelogues, but essentially on the epics of Homer and Virgil, whose heroes, to varying degrees, represent the suffering passenger tossed about on the waves in search of a new homeland.
The diary of this crossing was published posthumously in January 1755, three months after the author's death and, ironically, ten months before the earthquake that prompted Voltaire to concern himself with divine Providence.