Tobias George Smollett

The Expedition of Humphry Clinker (1771) Tobias George Smollett

Humphry Clinker, Smollett's last novel, published a few months before he died in 1771, is generally regarded as his greatest work, although it may not have been read quite so widely as Roderick Random and Peregrine Pickle. Humphry Clinker now finds a place beside them in an edition to which Professor Howard Mumford Jones, of Harvard, contributes a special Introduction and Mr. Charles Lee nearly two hundred Notes. These notes deal more fully than has been done before with real people and places, contemporary events, and fashions and throw considerable light on the social background of the story. While one may classify Hunphry Clinker as both an epistolary novel and picaresque romance, to be set beside Clarissa Harlowe and Tom Jones, it has qualities which are all its own and reminds the modern reader of later books (a little of James Joyce's Ulysses) as well as earlier. The quality on which its reputation rests was stated by Thackeray in his English Humorists: 'What man who has made his inestimable acquaintance will refuse his most cordial acknowledgements to the admirable Lieutenant Lismahago! The novel of "Humphry Clinker" is, I do think, the most laughable story that has ever been written since the goodly art of novel writing began. Winifred Jenkins and Tabitha Bramble must keep Englishmen on the grin for ages yet to come and in their letters and the story of their loves there is a perpetual fount of sparkling laughter.'