The Expedition of Humphry Clinker

Tobias George Smollett

University of Georgia Press, 1990 - Fiction - 500 pages

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.

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.

Bibliographic information

• Title: The Expedition of Humphry Clinker; Works of Tobias Smollett; Works. 1988
• Author: Tobias George Smollett
• Editors: Thomas R. Preston, O M. Brack
• Edition: illustrated, revised
• Publisher: University of Georgia Press, 1990
• ISBN: 0820315370, 9780820315379
• Length: 500 pages
• Subjects: Fiction / Classics; Fiction / Historical