Tobias Smollett – författare

Roderick is combative, often violent, but capable of great affection and generosity. His father had been disinherited and has left Scotland leaving his son penniless. After a brief apprenticeship to a surgeon, the innocent Roderick travels to London where he encounters various rogues.

Matthew Bramble, a gout-ridden misanthrope, travels Britain with his nephew, niece, spinster sister and man-servant, the trusty Humphry Clinker. In poor health, Bramble sees the world as one of degeneracy and raucous overcrowding, and will not hesitate to let his companions know his feelings on the matter. Peopled with pimps, drunkards, decadents and con-men, Humphrey Clinker displays Smollett’s ferociously pessimistic view of mankind, and his belief that the luxury of eighteenth-century England existence was the enemy of sense and sobriety. Presented in the form of letters from six very different characters, and full of joyful puns and double entendres, Humphrey Clinker is now recognised as a boisterous and observant masterpiece of English satire.Jeremy Lewis’s introduction examines why Smollett has become an unjustly neglected figure of English literature, and how the time in which he lived became a crucible for his work. This new edition contains notes, a chronology and suggested reading.

With an essay by Harold Bloom.'What is the society of London, that I should be tempted, for its sake, to mortify my senses, and compound with such uncleanness as my soul abhors?'Smollett's savage, boisterously funny lambasting of eighteenth-century British society charts the unfortunate journey of the gout-ridden and irascible squire Matthew Bramble across Britain, who finds himself everywhere surrounded by decadents, pimps, con-men, raucousness and degeneracy - until the arrival of the trusty manservant Humphry Clinker promises to improve his fortunes. Populated with unforgettable grotesques and written with a relish for earthy humour and wordplay, and a ferocious pessimism, Humphry Clinker is Smollett's masterpiece.The Penguin English Library - 100 editions of the best fiction in English, from the eighteenth century and the very first novels to the beginning of the First World War.

Roderick Random (1748), Smollett''s first novel, is full of the dazzling vitality characteristics of all his work, as well as of his own life. Roderick is the boisterous and unprincipled hero who answers life''s many misfortunes with a sledgehammer. Left penniless, he leaves his native Scotland for London and on the way meets Strap, and old schoolfellow. Together they undergo many adventures at the hands of scoundrels and rogues. Roderick qualifies as a surgeon''s mate and is pressed as a common soldier on bord the man-of-war Thunder. In a tale of romance as well as adventure, Roderick also finds time to fall in love... Smollett drew on his own experiences as a surgeon''s mate in the navy for the memorable scenes on board ship, and the novel combines documentary realism with great humour and panache. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World''s Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford''s commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

William Thackeray called it "the most laughable story that has ever been written since the goodly art of novel-writing began." As a group of travellers visit places in England and Scotland, they provide through satire and wit a vivid and detailed picture of the contemporary social and political scene.ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World''s Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford''s commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

A scholarly edition of a work by Tobias Smollett. The edition presents an authoritative text, together with an introduction, commentary notes, and scholarly apparatus.

William Thackeray called it "the most laughable story that has ever been written since the goodly art of novel-writing began." As a group of travellers visit places in England and Scotland, they provide through satire and wit a vivid and detailed picture of the contemporary social and political scene. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

Roderick Random (1748), Smollett's first novel, is full of the dazzling vitality characteristics of all his work, as well as of his own life. Roderick is the boisterous and unprincipled hero who answers life's many misfortunes with a sledgehammer. Left penniless, he leaves his native Scotland for London and on the way meets Strap, and old schoolfellow. Together they undergo many adventures at the hands of scoundrels and rogues. Roderick qualifies as a surgeon's mate and is pressed as a common soldier on bord the man-of-war Thunder. In a tale of romance as well as adventure, Roderick also finds time to fall in love... Smollett drew on his own experiences as a surgeon's mate in the navy for the memorable scenes on board ship, and the novel combines documentary realism with great humour and panache. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

The text, based on the first edition, is accompanied by explanatory footnotes. "Backgrounds and Contexts" includes selections from Smollett’s early poetry as well as non-fiction writing. "Criticism" presents the most important reviews of the book. "Contemporary Criticism" focuses on recent scholarship. A chronology and a bibliography are also included.

The first novel by a major English writer that is devoted to a thoroughgoing portrait of villainy, The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom chronicles the life of an aberrant criminal character. Filled with striking satiric thrusts at the legal, medical, and military establishments of mid-eighteenth-century Europe and England, the novel reveals Tobias Smollett's capacities as a commentator on contemporary life.First published in 1753, Ferdinand Count Fathom is an experimental work that explores the relations between history and fiction and introduces, for the first time in the English novel, episodes of Gothic melodrama. Too long neglected and never before available in a carefully prepared scholarly edition, Ferdinand Count Fathom may now be read, understood, and appreciated against the literary and historical background of the eighteenth-century world.

The poems, plays, and political writings included in this volume are essential to an understanding of Tobias Smollett and the literary and social currents of eighteenth-century England. In introductions to the separate sections of the volume, Byron Gassman identifies the circumstances that prompted Smollett to undertake these writings, traces the history of their publication and reception, and provides extensive explanations of historical and literary allusions.The poems in the volume represent Smollett's entire achievement as a poet. Among the shorter poems are "A New Song," his first printed work; "The Tears of Scotland," an early expression of his defiant spirit; and the popular "Ode to Independence," written during the last decade of his life. Two longer works, "Advice" (1746) and its sequel, "Reproof" (1747), are satires written in Popean heroic couplets; they mark the beginnings of Smollett's attacks on theater managers, corrupt politicians, iniquitous military leaders, and other well-known personalities of the day. An appendix to this volume includes five additional poems assigned but not definitely attributed to Smollett. The Reprisal; or The Tars of Old England and The Regicide are the only extant plays by Smollett. The Regicide, written when the author was only eighteen or nineteen, dramatizes the story of the murder of James I of Scotland. The Reprisal, a patriotic comedy performed as an afterpiece at the Theatre Royal, was a moderate theatrical success.Smollett's political writings for The Briton, a weekly journal he established in 1762 for defending the policies of the Earl of Bute, mark a particularly painful period in the author's life. A paper war erupted with the first number, and Smollett and Bute became the objects of scathing counterattacks, particularly in the writings of John Wilkes. This volume brings together for the first time all issues of The Briton and also includes a key identifying the weekly's numerous elliptical references to persons and places.

The Expedition of Humphry Clinker, Tobias Smollett's last published novel and most celebrated work, appeared in June 1771, three months before the author's death. A classic in the history of the English novel, it takes the form of a collection of letters written by various members of Mr. Matthew Bramble's family (for whom Humphry Clinker is a general servant) during their eight months of travel in England and Scotland in the 1760s. The wanderings of the Bramble party result in a series of amusing adventures and episodes, unfolding within the main plot in which the eccentric and contentious characters—"originals" as Bramble's nephew calls them—discover the sources of true happiness.In this work, Smollett realized two long-standing artistic goals—a harmonious fusion of satire and comedy and, through the deliberate intertwining of historical and contrived details, a portrayal of the world as constructed from both fiction and fact. In achieving the latter, Smollett was aided by the novel's form, for the epistolary style of travel books in his day set a precedent for the extensive commentary on incidents, experiences, people, and places in Humphry Clinker and allowed him to relate the same stories through multiple points of view.Much of the continuing appeal of the novel can be traced to the gossipy insights found in its mass of historical, biographical, economic, political, social, geographical, and topographical details. One meets, for example, Smollett's version of such historical personages as William Pitt, James Quin, and the Duke of Newcastle, as well as fictionalized versions of Smollett's own friends and enemies. Even minor characters are often taken directly from history. In addition, the book includes numerous quotations from and allusions to the Bible, earlier and contemporary literature, the Book of Common Prayer, medical matter, and proverbial lore.This edition of Humphry Clinker includes illustrations by George Cruikshank and Thomas Rowlandson and is the first scholarly edition to feature a comprehensive introduction, exhaustive textual editing, and detailed notes that cite passages from Smollett's nonfictional works and the works of his contemporaries to analyze the mass of allusions and references in the novel. Thomas R. Preston's introduction discusses the composition, publication, and early reception of Humphry Clinker, the crucial importance of money in the narrative and its revelation of character, and Smollett's use of language and dialect.

This is the definitive scholarly edition of Tobias Smollett’s first novel, widely regarded as one of his two masterpieces, the other being The Expedition of Humphry Clinker. Roderick Random was also, in its time, the chief rival to Henry Fielding’s comic novel Tom Jones.Surging with verbal, sexual, and martial energy, The Adventures of Roderick Random opens a window on life, love, and war in the eighteenth century. The hero battles his way from poverty and neglect to make his mark as a doctor, writer, fighter, and lover. His adventures take us across the world, from England and France to the Caribbean, Africa, and Latin America. One of the first truly global novels, it casts light on nearly every aspect of its time—imperialism, gender relations, slavery, urban life, colonial warfare, commerce, politics, the professions, high society, and the Hogarthian underworld.Complete with illustrations and comprehensive annotations, this is the first edition to include Smollett’s long-forgotten antiwar pamphlet, An Account of the Expedition against Carthagene in the West Indies, which was drawn from his own war experience and on which key sections of the novel are based. The editors also provide a detailed biographical and historical introduction, based on the most recent scholarship, mapping the novel’s enormous impact in its own time and its influence on the history of litera­ture over the centuries since.

This picaresque tale, first published in 1751, was Tobias Smollett’s second novel. Following the fortunes and misfortunes of the egotistical dandy Peregrine Pickle, the novel is written as a series of brief adventures with every chapter typically describing a new escapade. The novel begins with Peregrine as a young country gentleman. His mother rejects him, as do his aloof father and his dissolute, spiteful brother. Commodore Hawser Trunnion takes Peregrine under his care and raises him. Peregrine’s upbringing, education at Oxford, and journey to France, his debauchery, bankruptcy, jailing, and succession to his father’s fortune, and his final repentance and marriage to his beloved Emilia all provide scope for Smollett’s comic and caustic perspectiveon the Europe of his times. As John P. Zomchick and George S. Rousseau note in the introduction, “by contrasting the genteel and the common, the sophisticated and the primal, Smollett conveys forcefully the way it felt to be alive in the middle of the eighteenth century.”The introduction provides an overview of the composition and publication history of Peregrine Pickle and discusses the novel’s critical reception over time by such figures as Lady Luxborough, Sir Walter Scott, Joseph Conrad, and George Orwell. The text of the novel uses the first edition of 1751 as copy-text while recording the second edition’s substantive variants. Included are illustrations by Thomas Rowlandson, Richard Corbould, and George Cruikshank, as well as frontispieces designed by, and engraved in the style of, Henry Fuseli. A complete textual apparatus concludes the volume.

The first novel by a major English writer that is devoted to a thoroughgoing portrait of villainy, The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom chronicles the life of an aberrant criminal character. Filled with striking satiric thrusts at the legal, medical, and military establishments of mid-eighteenth-century Europe and England, the novel reveals Tobias Smollett's capacities as a commentator on contemporary life.First published in 1753, Ferdinand Count Fathom is an experimental work that explores the relations between history and fiction and introduces, for the first time in the English novel, episodes of Gothic melodrama. Too long neglected and never before available in a carefully prepared scholarly edition, Ferdinand Count Fathom may now be read, understood, and appreciated against the literary and historical background of the eighteenth-century world.

This is the definitive scholarly edition of Tobias Smollett’s first novel, widely regarded as one of his two masterpieces, the other being The Expedition of Humphry Clinker. Roderick Random was also, in its time, the chief rival to Henry Fielding’s comic novel Tom Jones.Surging with verbal, sexual, and martial energy, The Adventures of Roderick Random opens a window on life, love, and war in the eighteenth century. The hero battles his way from poverty and neglect to make his mark as a doctor, writer, fighter, and lover. His adventures take us across the world, from England and France to the Caribbean, Africa, and Latin America. One of the first truly global novels, it casts light on nearly every aspect of its time—imperialism, gender relations, slavery, urban life, colonial warfare, commerce, politics, the professions, high society, and the Hogarthian underworld.Complete with illustrations and comprehensive annotations, this is the first edition to include Smollett’s long-forgotten antiwar pamphlet, An Account of the Expedition against Carthagene in the West Indies, which was drawn from his own war experience and on which key sections of the novel are based. The editors also provide a detailed biographical and historical introduction, based on the most recent scholarship, mapping the novel’s enormous impact in its own time and its influence on the history of litera­ture over the centuries since.

In The History and Adventures of an Atom, a London haberdasher relates extraordinary tales of ancient Japan as dictated to him by an omniscient atom that has lived within the bodies of great figures of state. Intended “for the instruction of British ministers,” the work is a savage allegory of England during the Seven Years’ War (1756-1763), draping kings and politicians, domestic and foreign affairs in an intricately detailed, endlessly allusive veil of satire.Lacing his commentary with vitriol, Tobias Smollett gives fantastic expression in the Atom to many of the concerns voiced in his historical and political writings. He creates from the details of Japanese history an ingenious catalog of English places and personalities—from the up-start ruler “Taycho,” whose graspings for power resemble William Pitt’s, to a god of war called “Fatzman” who suggests the grotesquely obese Duke of Cumberland. Smollett also draws on the imagery of the period’s scurrilous political cartoons and injects into his satire a Rabelaisian humor that makes this work perhaps the most scatological in English literature.Edited and introduced by Robert Adams Day, this edition of the Atom is the first to appear since 1926 and the first ever to provide a carefully prepared text, a full apparatus of historical annotations, and an accurate key to personages and places. Day establishes the authorship and the long-disputed work, placing it within the context of Smollett’s writings and opinions, his times and literary world.

This new edition brings to life Tobias Smollett's fourth novel, The Life and Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves. No annotated edition of the work existed before the second half of the twentieth century, and this comprehensive edition by Robert Folkenflik and Barbara Laning Fitzpatrick features more accurate text as well as scrupulous textual and critical information. Also included in the detailed introduction is a unique examination of Sir Launcelot Greaves, the first illustrated serial novel, in relation to the engravings by Anthony Walker.Sir Launcelot Greaves was a groundbreaking novel for Smollett. Published in British Magazine beginning in January 1760, it was the first major work by an English novelist to have been written specifically for serial publication. The novel, Smollett's shortest, differs stylistically from his previous works. The most attractive of his heroes, Sir Launcelot is virtuous and strange, and he is surrounded by a Smollettian menagerie whose various jargons are part of this novel's linguistic virtuosity and satire. Sir Launcelot's character is an English naturalization of Quixote. Although Sir Launcelot, unlike Quixote, is not the object of the author's satire, an idealistic madness is central to both characters. In Smollett's work the theme of madness is integral to the relationship between self and society as the work ponders both the constitution of madness and the alternatives to revenge.Sir Launcelot Greaves, though not Smollett's most heralded work, has not received the recognition it deserves. Folkenflik and Fitzpatrick present a definitive edition that will be appreciated by scholars and lovers of eighteenth-century literature.

The poems, plays, and political writings included in this volume are essential to an understanding of Tobias Smollett and the literary and social currents of eighteenth-century England. In introductions to the separate sections of the volume, Byron Gassman identifies the circumstances that prompted Smollett to undertake these writings, traces the history of their publication and reception, and provides extensive explanations of historical and literary allusions.The poems in the volume represent Smollett's entire achievement as a poet. Among the shorter poems are "A New Song," his first printed work; "The Tears of Scotland," an early expression of his defiant spirit; and the popular "Ode to Independence," written during the last decade of his life. Two longer works, "Advice" (1746) and its sequel, "Reproof" (1747), are satires written in Popean heroic couplets; they mark the beginnings of Smollett's attacks on theater managers, corrupt politicians, iniquitous military leaders, and other well-known personalities of the day. An appendix to this volume includes five additional poems assigned but not definitely attributed to Smollett. The Reprisal; or The Tars of Old England and The Regicide are the only extant plays by Smollett. The Regicide, written when the author was only eighteen or nineteen, dramatizes the story of the murder of James I of Scotland. The Reprisal, a patriotic comedy performed as an afterpiece at the Theatre Royal, was a moderate theatrical success.Smollett's political writings for The Briton, a weekly journal he established in 1762 for defending the policies of the Earl of Bute, mark a particularly painful period in the author's life. A paper war erupted with the first number, and Smollett and Bute became the objects of scathing counterattacks, particularly in the writings of John Wilkes. This volume brings together for the first time all issues of The Briton and also includes a key identifying the weekly's numerous elliptical references to persons and places.

The Expedition of Humphry Clinker, Tobias Smollett's last published novel and most celebrated work, appeared in June 1771, three months before the author's death. A classic in the history of the English novel, it takes the form of a collection of letters written by various members of Mr. Matthew Bramble's family (for whom Humphry Clinker is a general servant) during their eight months of travel in England and Scotland in the 1760s. The wanderings of the Bramble party result in a series of amusing adventures and episodes, unfolding within the main plot in which the eccentric and contentious characters—"originals" as Bramble's nephew calls them—discover the sources of true happiness.In this work, Smollett realized two long-standing artistic goals—a harmonious fusion of satire and comedy and, through the deliberate intertwining of historical and contrived details, a portrayal of the world as constructed from both fiction and fact. In achieving the latter, Smollett was aided by the novel's form, for the epistolary style of travel books in his day set a precedent for the extensive commentary on incidents, experiences, people, and places in Humphry Clinker and allowed him to relate the same stories through multiple points of view.Much of the continuing appeal of the novel can be traced to the gossipy insights found in its mass of historical, biographical, economic, political, social, geographical, and topographical details. One meets, for example, Smollett's version of such historical personages as William Pitt, James Quin, and the Duke of Newcastle, as well as fictionalized versions of Smollett's own friends and enemies. Even minor characters are often taken directly from history. In addition, the book includes numerous quotations from and allusions to the Bible, earlier and contemporary literature, the Book of Common Prayer, medical matter, and proverbial lore.This edition of Humphry Clinker includes illustrations by George Cruikshank and Thomas Rowlandson and is the first scholarly edition to feature a comprehensive introduction, exhaustive textual editing, and detailed notes that cite passages from Smollett's nonfictional works and the works of his contemporaries to analyze the mass of allusions and references in the novel. Thomas R. Preston's introduction discusses the composition, publication, and early reception of Humphry Clinker, the crucial importance of money in the narrative and its revelation of character, and Smollett's use of language and dialect.

Funny, honest and full of subtle magic, this is a rare and revealing portrait of 18th century Europe at a time when Marie Antoinette had just become queen of all France, the Grand Tour was in its infancy and Cannes was a quiet fishing village. In 1763 Tobias Smollett set sail from Folkestone to Boulogne. He would not return to England for two years, during which time he travelled extensively - and in a notoriously ill-tempered fashion - through much of France and Italy. Smollett seemed 'determined to be pleased with nothing' and was 'sardonic, satirical and decidedly gloomy'. In Paris, everything had 'shrunk' and was twice as expensive as his last visit. Versailles was a 'dismal habitation'. In Rome, he felt that Michelangelo's Last Judgement resembled a mob; his inn in San Remo was more miserable than the worst ale-house in England and in Lerici he was sure he would be poisoned. And yet, there were places where even Smollett could not fail to be captivated. The Maison Carrée in Nimes was 'ravishingly beautiful', Nice was enchanting and the port of Genoa 'dazzling'. His obvious pleasure in the landscapes through which he passed, his keen eye for colourful, telling details and the fact that his letters appear virtually as they were written beautifully illuminate both Smollett's character and the places he visited.

Funny, honest and full of subtle magic, this is a rare and revealing portrait of 18th century Europe at a time when Marie Antoinette had just become queen of all France, the Grand Tour was in its infancy and Cannes was a quiet fishing village. In 1763 Tobias Smollett set sail from Folkestone to Boulogne. He would not return to England for two years, during which time he travelled extensively - and in a notoriously ill-tempered fashion - through much of France and Italy. Smollett seemed 'determined to be pleased with nothing' and was 'sardonic, satirical and decidedly gloomy'. In Paris, everything had 'shrunk' and was twice as expensive as his last visit. Versailles was a 'dismal habitation'. In Rome, he felt that Michelangelo's Last Judgement resembled a mob; his inn in San Remo was more miserable than the worst ale-house in England and in Lerici he was sure he would be poisoned. And yet, there were places where even Smollett could not fail to be captivated. The Maison Carrée in Nimes was 'ravishingly beautiful', Nice was enchanting and the port of Genoa 'dazzling'. His obvious pleasure in the landscapes through which he passed, his keen eye for colourful, telling details and the fact that his letters appear virtually as they were written beautifully illuminate both Smollett's character and the places he visited.