Henry Fielding

summary

A found manuscript frames a fantasti­cal account of the narrator’s death (Dec. 1741) and passage into the other world—Mercury guides him by a spiritual coach through the City of Diseases, the palace of Death, the Wheel of Fortune and to the gates of Elysium.
Passengers and personified maladies recount causes of death, lots are drawn determining rebirths, and Judge Minos adjudicates souls, exposing human vanities and hypocrisies.
A long central episode follows “Julian” through numerous successive lives (soldier, monk, king, beggar, tailor, poet, etc.), and the volume closes with Anne Boleyn’s reflective memoir—satirical meditations on ambition, vanity and true happiness.