Tobias George Smollett
Tobias George Smollett (1721-1771), Scottish novelist, was born in
Dalquhurn,
Dumbarton County Scotland. Smollett was born beneath a plane
tree at Dalquharn
House on the family estate of Bon hill in the Vale of
Leven, near the village of
Renton, Dumbartonshire. At fourteen Smollett
was apprenticed to a Glasgow
doctor. He studied medicine at Glasgow
University and moved to London in 1740.
He was a ship's surgeon in the
Carragena expedition against the Spanish in the
West Indies, and lived in
Jamaica until 1744 when he returned to London and
renewed his earlier
attempts to stage a play he had written The Regicide, but
still met with no
success. He also failed to set up his own medical practice.
His first
novel, the partly autobiographical Roderick Random (1748), was an
immediate
success. His best novel, The Expedition of Humphry Clinker (1771), has
become
a classic. It is a story, told in a series of letters, about the travels
of a
family through England and Scotland. Smollett was troubled by lack of
money.
He spent his last years in poor health, and died in Livorno, Italy,
on
October 21, 1771. Two years later, Johnson and Boswell stayed at
Cameron House
with Smollett's cousin James, who was preparing to erect a
Tuscan column in
Smollett's memory at Renton. Johnson helped compose the
Latin obituary on the
plinth, and the column stood in what subsequently
became the playground of a
school. Some of Tobias Smollett's work consists of
The Tears of Scotland (1746).
Poem on the defeat of the Scots at the
Battle of Culloden. The Adventures of
Roderick Random ( 1748 ). Gil Blas.
Translation of LeSage's novel. ( 1749 ). The
Adventures of Peregrine
Pickle ( 1751 ). The Adventures of Ferdinand, Count
Fathom ( 1753 ). Don
Quixote. Translation of Cervantes' novel. ( 1755). The
Adventures of Sir
Lancelot Greaves ( 1760 ). Travels through France and Italy (
1766 ). The
History and Adventures of an Atom ( 1769 ). The Expedition of
Humphrey
Clinker ( 1771 ). Some critics regard Tobias Smollet as more satirist
meaning
that a work of literature or art that, by inspiring laughter, contempt,
or
horror, seeks to correct the follies and abuses it uncovers. I don't
know
what that means though. This is a paragraph from Tobias Smollett's book
The
Adventures of Roderick Random. Roderick Random is the orphaned,
unwanted
grandson of a severe old Scots magistrate, exposed by his
grandfather’s known
neglect to the malice of the community. His principal
enemies are the
schoolmaster and the young heir. It is not long before a deus
ex machina appears
in the form of a sailor uncle: He was a strongly built
man, somewhat
bandy-legged, with a neck like that of a bull, and a face which
had withstood
the most obstinate assaults of the weather. His dress consisted
of a soldier’s
coat, altered for him by the ship’s tailor, a striped flannel
jacket, a pair
of red breeches japanned with pitch, clean grey worsted
stockings, large silver
buckles that covered theree-fourths of his shoues, a
silver laced hat whosecrown
overlooked the brim about an inch and a half, a
black bob wig in buckle, a check
shirt, a silk hankerchief, a henger with a
brass handle girded on his thigh by a
tarnished laced belt, and a good oak
plant under his arm. I picked this
paragraph because here Smollett is
describing the hero of the story Roderick
Random. I believe it is
important to have a brief if not full description of
characters, so that you
can imagine seeing them maybe even being there, in your
mind, while they are
doing what is described in the
book.