The Expedition of Humphry Clinker (The World's Classics) [Paperback]

Tobias Smollett (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 1984 | Series: The World's Classics

1929. Smollett was a man of letters in the fullest sense. Trained as a physician, he was not only a novelist but also a playwright, poet, journalist, historian, travel writer, critic, translator, and editor. A novel in epistolary form about a group of travelers who visit places in England and Scotland and provide through their satirical and witty letters a vivid and detailed picture of the contemporary social and political scene. See other titles by this author available from Kessinger Publishing.

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

Founded in 1906 by J.M. Dent, the Everyman Library has always tried to make the best books ever written available to the greatest number of people at the lowest possible price. Unique editorial features that help Everyman Paperback Classics stand out from the crowd include: a leading scholar or literary critic's introduction to the text, a biography of the author, a chronology of her or his life and times, a historical selection of criticism, and a concise plot summary. All books published since 1993 have also been completely restyled: all type has been reset, to offer a clarity and ease of reading unique among editions of the classics; a vibrant, full-color cover design now complements these great texts with beautiful contemporary works of art. But the best feature must be Everyman's uniquely low price. Each Everyman title offers these extensive materials at a price that competes with the most inexpensive editions on the market-but Everyman Paperbacks have durable binding, quality paper, and the highest editorial and scholarly standards. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

About the Author

Novelist, playwright, journalist, historian, travel writer, critic, translator, editor, and compiler, Tobias Smollett (1721-1771) was an eighteenth-century man of letters in the fullest sense of the phrase. Though his writings have been variously gathered together over the last two centuries, no definitive scholarly edition of Smollett's works has ever been published. The Georgia edition, though not a complete collection, includes all of those writings by which Smollett was best known in his own time and by which he is best remembered in ours. Jerry C. Beasley, General Editor, is a professor of English at the University of Delaware. He is the editor of The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, the first volume to be published in the Georgia edition of The Works of Tobias Smollett. O.M. Brack, Jr., Textual Editor, is a professor of English at Arizona State University. He is the editor of the forthcoming first volume of The Shorter Prose Writings of Samuel Johnson. Jim Springer Borck, Technical Editor, is a professor of English at Louisiana State University. He is general editor of the annual Eighteenth Century: A Current Bibliography.

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 400 pages
• Publisher: Oxford Univ Pr (T) (February 1984)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0192816640
• ISBN-13: 978-0192816641
• Product Dimensions: 7.2 x 4.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,286,661 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

27 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Enjoy the trip, but don't drink the water, June 27, 2003

By 

Peter Reeve (Thousand Oaks, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Expedition of Humphry Clinker (Oxford World's Classics) (Paperback)

One of the great things about these Amazon customer reviews is that they can alert you to wonderful books that you would otherwise not consider reading. "Humphry Clinker" is a prime example. An eighteenth-century epistolary novel may not sound too enticing and I would guess that few people other than students whose courses oblige them to, would read it these days. Well, I am here to tell you that you should! It is social satire at its brilliant best. Smollett satirized English society mercilessly, but was even harder on his fellow Scots. The result is a novel that is a continual and wicked joy to read.

The characters are finely drawn and their correspondence is written in very individual voices. We follow their adventures as they journey through England and Scotland in the years before revolution in America and France changed the world forever. It is a world obsessed with social class, money and advantageous marriage (so why did I say it changed for ever!). There is plenty of sharp humor and a deal of profound insight into human nature. Smollett's last and best novel, it is a wise and mature journal of Mankind's folly.

Incidentally, the graphic description of the spa town of Bath will make you never want to drink spa water again. Reading that particular chapter requires a strong stomach.

21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Time Capsule for the Eighteenth Century, May 18, 2002

By 

Allen Michie (Williamsburg, IA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Expedition of Humphry Clinker (Oxford World's Classics) (Paperback)

his great novel, written in 1771, is one of those books that is written so much in the present moment of its own time that it becomes a valuable and fascinating time capsule for future generations. There is no more entertaining way to visit another time and place. There is no need for you to come to the novel already knowing anything about the eighteenth century, because Smollett has his sharp observant mind and all five of his senses open to his world for you--here you will read all of the sights, sounds, tastes, touches, and most memorably of all (for better and for worse) the *smells* of what surrounds him.

The grumpy-old-man-with-a-heart-of-gold Matthew Bramble takes his family and assorted hangers-on for a tour of Great Britain, visiting Bath, London, and many other places along the way. For lovers of Scotland, you are in for a treat here, as Smollett writes this novel as an important "P.R." job for his homeland to his skeptical English readers. The descriptions of Edinburgh, Glasgow, and the Hebrides make you want to book your airline tickets right away; Smollett has an eye for those aspects of the Scottish landscape and Scottish people that haven't really changed in the last 250 years.

This is an epistolary novel, written entirely in the form of letters with no central narrator.
The strength of this format is that it allows the reader to see the same places and events from the (sometimes radically different) perspective of more than one person. As a result, you get comedy, tragedy, farce, romance, satire, and a good adventure story all in one enjoyable package.

One word of caution, though: because of the epistolary format and the travelogue format, you shouldn't really approach "Humphry Clinker" with the expectations of finding a strong unified plot. This is something that we get mostly from the novels of the late eighteenth century and certainly the Victorian novels of the nineteenth century. There IS a plot--a good one--but just don't expect the plot to be the star of the show. If you read it as a series of memorable and sharply drawn sketches and characters and places, and for how well it captures what is unique to the time and place in which it is written, I think you will enjoy it a great deal.

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Worth Taking the Time to Read Slowly, September 3, 2003

By 

mp - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Expedition of Humphry Clinker (Penguin Classics) (Mass Market Paperback)

Tobias Smollett's 1771 novel, "The Expedition of Humphry Clinker," took me almost two months to read. The novel, a "sort of novel," as Dr. Johnson once said, I think of his own "Rasselas," doesn't really have a plot, which contributes to the pacing, which is slow, but highly enjoyable. From the beginning of April through the end of November, basically from the season of planting through the season of reaping, Squire Bramble, an irascible hypochondriac of a Welshman, and his family engage upon a series of travels which lead them from Wales through England to Scotland and back again.

An epistolary novel, "Humphry Clinker" is no stranger in format to the eighteenth century - however, odd to me was the fact that none of the writers - Squire Bramble, his sister Tabitha, their nephew and niece Jery and Lydia Melford, and Tabitha's waiting woman Winifred - ever receives a response. The letters of the Bramble expedition encompass a wide range of topics, along a range of experience and sentiment, of interaction, which itself is a veritable buffet of later eighteenth century customs, coffeehouse culture, civil engineering, agriculture, speech, fashion, science, moral philosophy, art, and manners spanning Wales, England, and Scotland, both in countryside and cityscape.

As such, the novel has a number of preoccupations - the social and political relations between different countries which comprised the then-British Empire - English-Scottish relations in particular are a focus, some 71 years after the Act of Union, and were pretty fascinating to me. There are a number of references to America, and to the Native Americans, which the Scot Cadwallader Colden had written of only a few years before in his "History of the Five Indian Nations." England's own internal politics are reflected on throughout the novel. The debate over luxury, a hot eighteenth century topic, is constantly in the background of the Bramble family's letters.

The letters of Squire Bramble to his doctor-friend Lewis and Jery Melford's to his college friend Wat Phillips comprise the bulk of the novel, and as with so many epistolary novels, their letters often tell us as much about their circumstances and exploits as they do about the writers themselves. These are both heroes of sensibility, a young and an old whose ages frequently provide interesting takes on the same events. Such can be said about the other writers as well - From the Squire to Jery to Tabitha to Lydia to Winifred - we are given a wealth of perspective and language - valuable lenses all to form our own opinions of the events, such as they are, that transpire in their travels. Their various perspectives on two of the novel's minor characters, the eponymous Humphry Clinker and the combative disputant Scot Obadiah Lismahago (the most cosmopolitan figure among the recurring characters), confer substance, interest, and warmth upon characters who do not themselves write letters.

As valuable and entertaining a travelogue as Voltaire's "Letters Upon England," or Smollett-rival Laurence Sterne's "Sentimental Journey through France and Italy," and as simultaneously celebratory and critical of sentimentality as Henry Mackenzie's "The Man of Feeling," "The Expedition of Humphry Clinker" was my first experience with Tobias Smollett, and certainly shall not be my last. Empahses on religion and reason, on intellect and emotion, on the state of marriage, on the Horatian preoccupation with how to live the good life, interest in literature and culture, and an almost universal eye for satire and critique make "Humphry Clinker" well worth taking the time to read slowly. It is a novel which I found both entertaining and edifying. Surely, a "great original."