Tobias George Smollett Essay, Research Paper
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 Cerva
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.