Henry Fielding is a well known 18th century novelist and playwright - but his colourful life saw him become obsessed with a young Lyme heiress.

This obsession brought him much notoriety.

A Bow Street magistrate and a friend of the artist Hogarth, Fielding was said by some to be a rake and a scoundrel.

But he was an influential and hugely successful novelist and dramatist, regarded as one of the greatest writers of his time.

But "make money your God," he said, "and it will plague you like the devil!"

Fielding was born in Glastonbury in 1707 into a distinguished family, educated at Eton, and a practising lawyer before he turned to writing.

Perhaps his best-known novel today is Tom Jones, which was turned into a box office hit film starring Albert Finney and Susannah York.

In Lyme Regis he has a certain notoriety having tried - unsuccessfully - to seduce a beautiful young heiress, Sarah Andrews, whom he followed to the town in 1725 and with whom he was said to be madly in love.

Some say the then 18-year-old Henry never forgot Sarah, and suspect that she was the model for Sophia Weston in Tom Jones.