Tobias Smollett, Scotland's First Novelist
Tobias Smollett, Scotland's First Novelist

Author: Paul-Gabriel Boucé

Publisher: Associated University Presse

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 326

ISBN-13: 9780874139884

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Takes a look at issues raised not only in Smollett's novels, for which he is usually remembered, but also in other works of this prolific Scottish author.

Poems, Plays, and "The Briton"
Poems, Plays, and

Author: Tobias Smollett

Publisher: University of Georgia Press

Published: 1993

Total Pages: 670

ISBN-13: 0820314285

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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.

Tobias Smollett, Novelist
Tobias Smollett, Novelist

Author: Jerry C. Beasley

Publisher: University of Georgia Press

Published: 1998

Total Pages: 284

ISBN-13: 9780820319711

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Tobias Smollett (1721-1771) was a man of letters in the fullest sense. He was not only a novelist but also a playwright, poet, journalist, historian, travel writer, critic, translator, and editor. Trained as a physician, he saw the world with acutely sensitive eyes, believing that what was externally visible signified and gave definition to what could be known about the private, interior life. His fiction is therefore distinguished by its intensely visual qualities. Tobias Smollett: Novelist goes beyond all previous critical studies in its attention to these qualities in Smollett's novels, reading them as exercises of a visual imagination. Along with Defoe, Richardson, Fielding, and Sterne, Smollett was one of the major British novelists of his generation. Like his kindred spirit William Hogarth, he was both chronicler and interpreter of what he saw. His episodically structured narratives reflect his vision of a harsh and unpredictable world, while his unforgettable characters display his deep understanding of the individual as moral agent. Jerry C. Beasley's book is both focused and broad in its range, crossing disciplines and genres as it seeks to demonstrate intersections between the graphic and verbal arts, always with an eye to how Smollett crafted his stories. Seventeen illustrations, many of them from works by Hogarth, complement the argument. This book honors Smollett as an author who wrote in an unorthodox but compelling way and makes the complexities of his narratives more accessible than they have ever been before.

Tobias Smollett in the Enlightenment
Tobias Smollett in the Enlightenment

Author: Richard J. Jones

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2011-04

Total Pages: 233

ISBN-13: 1611480485

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Tobias Smollett (1721-1771) is best known today as a novelist, but in the eighteenth-century, he was regarded as a historian and critic. In this book, Richard J. Jones explores the diversity of Smollett's journalistic and literary writings and establishes new connections between Smollett's work and writers of the Scottish Enlightenment. The book takes as its focal point Smollett's visit to Nice, between 1763 and 1765, and the account he wrote of it in Travels through France and Italy (1766). This account is usually seen as a "travel narrative" but Jones argues that it should be read as a "pocket encyclopedia" in the tradition of Voltaire. Jones divides his study into sections on medicine, fine art, the theater and history. In doing so, he offers a productive juxtaposition of authors, texts and contexts, presenting Smollett as a writer whose Scottish (and particularly Glaswegian) identity informed his involvement in a wider European Enlightenment.