Tobias Smollett
1721–1771
Biography
Tobias Smollett (1721–1771) was a Scottish writer who trained as a surgeon. In the 1740s he went to sea as a naval surgeon, took part in a disastrous British campaign in the Caribbean, and for a time settled in Jamaica. He then returned to London to make his living by writing, and he became one of the best-known prose writers of his age, though his finances were often precarious.
He is remembered for picaresque novels, stories that follow a wandering, often roguish hero through a string of episodes. The Adventures of Roderick Random (1748), The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle (1751) and The Expedition of Humphry Clinker (1771) were widely read, and their influence reached later British novelists, Dickens among them. Printers of his day altered his texts freely, which is one reason modern readers depend on careful scholarly editions.
Two of his novels are on this site in English. The Adventures of Roderick Random follows a young Scot whose bad luck takes him to sea and then to London and beyond. The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom (1753) is a darker book about a clever deceiver who works his way across Europe by fraud. Its poor sales left Smollett in debt.
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Books
The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom
by T. Smollett
The Adventures of Ferdinand, Count Fathom is a novel by Tobias Smollett first published in 1753. It was Smollett's third novel and met with less success than his two previous more picaresque tales. The central character is a villainous dandy who cheats, swindles and philanders…
Summary from Wikipedia: The Adventures of Ferdinand, Count Fathom (CC BY-SA 4.0)The Adventures of Roderick Random
by T. Smollett
Tobias Smollett's 1748 picaresque follows a Scottish youth from disinherited poverty through the squalid ships of the Royal Navy and the London streets. A reader finds rough humour, fights and a fast-moving tour of Georgian low life. This book uses the racial and other slurs of…
Summary written by Claude Sonnet 5.5.