Switch to English Switch to French

The Open University  |   Study at the OU  |   About the OU  |   Research at the OU  |   Search the OU

Listen to this page  |   Accessibility

the experience of reading in Britain, from 1450 to 1945...

Reading Experience Database UK Historical image of readers
 
 
 
 

Listings for Author:  

Tobias Smollett

  

Click check box to select all entries on this page:

 


  

Tobias Smollett : Peregrine Pickle

'Dr Delany read his wife an eclectic range of books from Eusebius' "Life of Constantine the Great" to "Peregrine Pickle".'

Century: 1700-1799     Reader/Listener/Group: Patrick Delany      Print: Book

  

Tobias Smollett : Roderick Random

I Read the travels of Roderick Random, who had been into different Quarters and he Exposed the severaty of the Captains over the Men, Esspeatialy the Sick, in a Most Shocking Manner, Which I believe in a great Measure to be true.

Unknown
Century: 1700-1799     Reader/Listener/Group: John Yeoman      

  

Tobias Smollett : Roderick Random

Read the Second Part of Mr. Roderick Random

Unknown
Century: 1700-1799     Reader/Listener/Group: John Yeoman      

  

Tobias Smollett : Roderick Random

'As a child, William Heaton the Yorkshire weaver-poet, "rambled with Christian from his home in the wilderness to the Celestial City; mused over his hair-breadth escapes, and his conflict with Giant Despair", enjoying it exactly as he enjoyed Roderick Random and Robinson Crusoe.'

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: William Heaton      Print: Book

  

Tobias George Smollett : 

...a desire for information which was by no means whollly neglected even whilst I was an apprentice, I always found some time for reading, and I almost always found the means to procure books, useful books, not Novels. My reading was of course devoid of method, and very desultory. I had read in English the only language in which I could read, the histories of Greece and Rome, and some translated works of Greek and Roman writers. Hume, Smollett, Fieldings novels and Robertsons works, some of Humes Essays, some Translations from french writers, and much on geography -some books on Anatomy and Surgery, some relating to Science and the Arts, and many Magazines. I had worked all the Problems in the Introduction to Guthries Geography, and had made some small progress in Geometry.

Century: 1700-1799     Reader/Listener/Group: Francis Place      Print: Book

  

Tobias Smollett : 

'Robert White... had somewhat more progressive tastes [than Robert Story], which extended to Shelley, Keats, Childe Harold, and The Lady of the Lake. But his reading stopped short at the Romantics. In 1873 he confessed that he could not stomach avant-garde poets like Tennyson. "As for our modern novel-writers - Dickens, Thackeray and others I do not care to read them, since Smollett, Fielding and Scott especially are all I desire".'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Robert White      Print: Book

  

Tobias Smollett : 

[due to the fact that books in working class communities were generally cheap out of copyright reprints, not new works] Welsh collier Joseph Keating was able to immerse himself in Swift, Pope, Fielding, Richardson, Smollett, Goldsmith, Sheridan, Goldsmith, Keats, Byron, Shelley, Dickens and Greek philosophy, as well as the John Dicks edition of Vanity Fair in weekly installments. The common denominator among these authors was that they were all dead. "Volumes by living authors were too high-priced for me", Keating explained. "Our schoolbooks never mentioned living writers; and the impression in my mind was that an author, to be a living author, must be dead and that his work was all the better if he died of neglect and starvation".'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Keating      Print: Book

  

Tobias Smollett : [unknown]

'On learning that [Hall] Caine was to present twenty-four lectures in Liverpool on "Prose Fiction" ... [D. G. Rossetti] insisted that he read the works [of English novelists] aloud to him; hence "I read Fielding and Smollett, Richardson, Radcliffe, 'Monk' Lewis, Thackeray and Dickens, under a running fire of comment and criticism from Rossetti".'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Hall Caine      Print: Book

  

Tobias Smollett : [unknown]

'Britain was a mainly urban society...and soon an expanding range of sexual literature became available in the cities. Mark Grossek, the son of a Jewish immigrant tailor in Southwark, acquired his knowledge from grafitti, scandalous stories in the local press, 'Lloyd's Weekly News', 'Measure for Measure', the Song of Solomon, some old plays a fellow student had dug out of his father's library, General Booth's 'In Darkest England', Tobias Smollett, Quain's 'Dictionary of Medicine', as well as Leviticus ("For myself, the most subtle aura of enticement was wafted from the verb 'begat' and the noun 'concubine'"). There was also Ovid, but unfortunately the popular translation published by Bohn "had left all the tasty chunks in Latin".'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Mark Grossek      Print: Book

  

Tobias Smollett : 

'As a collier [Joseph Keating]... heard a co-worker sigh, "Heaven from all creatures hides the book of fate". Keating was stunned: "You are quoting Pope". "Ayh", replied his companion, "me and Pope do agree very well". Keating had himself been reading Pope, Fielding, Smollett, Goldsmith and Richardson in poorly printed paperbacks. Later he was reassigned to a less demanding job at a riverside colliery pumping station, which allowed him time to tackle Swift, Sheridan, Byron, Keats, Shelley and Thackeray'.

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Keating      Print: Book

  

Tobias Smollett : History of England

I suppose I had read Hume's England when I wrote last; and I need not repeat my opinion of it. My perusal of the continuation - eight volumes, of history as it is called, by Tobias Smollett MD and others was a much harder and more unprofitable task.

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle      Print: Book

  

Tobias George Smollett : The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom

'I got thro 6 chapters of Count Fathom- about an hours undertaking- and this has been the way thro my whole readings- a chapter at one hour - the volume thrown aside for perhaps two more- take it up make another attempt- ...'

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: William Upcott      Print: Book

  

Tobias Smollett : Roderick Random

'Carter and Talbot read fiction and corresponded about it, including "Roderick Random", the novels of Eliza Haywood, French romances, and Charlotte Lennox's "Henrietta", in which Talbot funds a number of objectionable qualities including "irreligion" and "the pride and sauciness" of the heroine. Their "favourite" among women novelists was Sarah Fielding, many of whose works they read and discussed.'

Century: 1700-1799     Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Talbot      Print: Book

  

Tobias Smollett : Humphry Clinker

November 19, 1880 [Paris] 'I have been reading with great interest Humphrey Clinker [sic], which I like much the best of Smollett's works. I read Peregrine Pickle some years ago on the Continent, and from what I remember of it, I consider it superior to Roderick Random, which I finished a week or two ago. As to Mr. Bramble, he takes me back into the last century, and is quite inimitable. I am now reading the Sentimental Journey, which I do not like so well.'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Charlotte Schreiber      Print: Book

  

Tobias Smollett : Roderick Random

November 19, 1880 [Paris] 'I have been reading with great interest Humphrey Clinker [sic], which I like much the best of Smollett's works. I read Peregrine Pickle some years ago on the Continent, and from what I remember of it, I consider it superior to Roderick Random, which I finished a week or two ago. As to Mr. Bramble, he takes me back into the last century, and is quite inimitable. I am now reading the Sentimental Journey, which I do not like so well.'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Charlotte Schreiber      Print: Book

  

Tobias Smollett : The expedition of Humphrey Clinker

'Tuesday the 4th being a very wet day we were obliged to keep pretty close to our miserably dull apartments the walls of w'ch were about a yard thick & the windows very small. We however at the library (consisting of about 400 volumes) got Mrs Smiths [sic] novel of "Celestina" & "Humphrey Clinker" to amuse us.'

Century: 1700-1799     Reader/Listener/Group: John Marsh, Elizabeth Marsh and Miss White     Print: Book

  

Tobias Smollett : Ferdinand Count Fathom

'Finished reading Fathom [underlined].'

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson      Print: Book

  

Tobias Smollett : Complete History of England

'At ten the poor infant was reading Smollett's History... She summed up her impression with scornful lucidity: "There seem to have been more weak kings than wise ones".'

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Isabella (Annabella) Milbanke      Print: Book

  

Tobias Smollett : [unknown]

'It [central London] was truly a wonder world, for I seeing it not merely with my eyes of flesh but with the eyes of heightened imagination; -seeing it not only through spectacles manufactured by an optician, but through glasses supplied by magicians names Charles Dickens, Walter Scott, William Makepeace Thackeray, Joseph Addison, Daniel Defoe, Henry Fielding, Toby Smollett, Sam Johnson and Will Shakespeare himself. Had I scraped an acquaintance with all these before I was fifteen? I knew them well! -and that was the trouble. I was book hungry, and I found a land where books were accessible in a quantity and variety sufficient to satisfy even my uncontrolled voracity.'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas A. Jackson      Print: Book

  

Tobias Smollett : [unknown]

'Later on I found at the bottom of a cupboard some of volumes -Addison's "Spectator", Pope's "Homer", and a few other things. My grandmother -who also devoured books in great gulps -gave me a "Robinson Crusoe", and lent me volumes containing four "Waverley Novels" apiece. Much about the same time my father got bound up a set of Dickens's novels he had bought in weekly parts. They were in the popular quarto edition with drawings by Fred Barnard, John Mahony and others. These were a real treasure -and all the more so as my father was an ardent Dickens "fan" who rather despised Scott as a "romantic" and a "Tory". His mother (born in 1815, so old enough to have read the "Waverley Novels" when they were still comparatively new things) rather sniffed at Dickens, and definitely preferred both Scott and Thackeray. She gave me "Vanity Fair" as an antidote to "David Copperfield" and added a Shakespeare, and a bundle of "paperback" editions -Fielding, Smollett, Fennimore Cooper and Captain Marryatt.'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas A. Jackson      Print: Book

  

Tobias Smollett : Roderick Random

'Thursday 14th October ?Roderick Random? (T. Smolett)'.

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore      Print: Book

  

Tobias Smollett : Peregrine Pickle

'Have you seen the last Edinr review? There are several promising articles in it - Scotts "Lord of the Isles," Standard Novels, Lewis' & Clarke's travels up the Missouri, (of which a most delectable account is given in the Quarterly), Joanna Southcott, &c &c. I have been revising Akenside, since I saw you. - He pos[s]esses a warm imagination & great strength & beauty of diction. His poem, you know, does not like Campbell's "Hope" consist of a number of little incidents told in an interesting manner - & selected to illustrate his positions - it is little else than a moral declamation. Nevertheless I like it. Akenside was an enthusiastic admirer of the ancient republics and of the ancient philosophers - He thought highly of Lord Shaftesbury's principles & had a bad opinion of Scotsmen. For this last peculiarity, he has been severely caricatured by Smollet[t] in his Peregrine Pickle - under the character of the fantastic English Doctor in Franc[e] - When we mention Shaftesbury - is his book in your pos[s]ession, and can you let me have a reading of it?'

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle      Print: Book

  

Tobias Smollett : History of England

'I have read thro' that clear & candid but cold hearted narration of David Hume - and now seven of Toby Smollet[t]'s eight chaotic volumes are before me. To say nothing of Gibbon (of whom I have only read a volume) - nor of the Watsons the Russel[l]s the Voltaires &c &c known to me only by name. Alas! thou seest how I am beset. - It would be of little avail to criticise Bacons "Essays": it is enough to say, that Stewarts opinion of them is higher than I can attain. For style, they are rich & venerable - for thinking, incorrect & fanciful.'

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle      Print: Book

  

Tobias Smollett : History of England [probably]

'I have been reading little [since I last wrote to you] except Coxe's travels in Switzerland, Poland, Russia &c, Humes history together with part of Smollet[t], Gibbon &c. Coxe is an intelligent man, and communicates in a very popular manner considerable information concerning the countries thro which he passed.'

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle      Print: Book

  

Tobias Smollett : The expedition of Humphrey Clinker

Letter to Miss Ewing, November 14, 1778 '? the former [ie Highlanders] indeed are a people never to be known unless you live among them, and learn their language. Smollet, in Humphrey Clinker, is the only writer that has given a genuine sketch of Scotch manners ?.'

Century: 1700-1799     Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Grant [nee MacVicar]      Print: Book

  

Tobias Smollett : Roderick Random

Letter to Miss Reid May 17,1773 'As far as a mountain can resemble a man, it resembles the person Smollet has marked out by the name of Captain Gawky.'

Century: 1700-1799     Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Grant [nee MacVicar]      Print: Book

  

Tobias Smollett : unknown

Letter to Miss Ourry March 27 1791 'I am very fond of the lower class of people; they have sentiment, serious habits, and a kind of natural courtesy; in short, they are not mob, an animal which Smollet most emphatically says he detests in its head, midriff, and members; and, in this point, I do not greatly differ with him. You would wonder how many of the genteeler class live here. They are not rich to be sure; so much the better for us; For "Where no contiguous palace rears its head/To shame the meanness of the humble shed" people do very well, and keep each other in countenance."'

Century: 1700-1799     Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Grant [nee MacVicar]      Print: Book

  

Tobias Smollett : Adventures of Roderick Random

'read Somnium Scipionis & Roderick Random'

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley      Print: Book

  

Tobias Smollett : Adventures of Roderick Random

'finish Roderick Random'

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley      Print: Book

  

Tobias Smollett : Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves, The

'Read Fielding's Amelia - Sir Launcelot Greaves. a little of Tacitus - Twopenny post bag.'

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley      Print: Book

  

Tobias Smollett : 

'More I reflect on the novel the higher I place it: attempts to read Swift, Miss Burney, Smollett, place it on a pinnacle.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster      Print: Book

  

Tobias Smollett : The Adventures of Ferdinand, Count Fathom

From Alfred Tennyson's journal of his tour in Cornwall, 1848: '19th [June]. Finished reading Fathom.'

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson      Print: Book

  

Tobias Smollett : 

'I myself like Smollet's Novels better than Fielding's; the perpetual Parody teizes one; - there is more Rapidity and Spirit in the Scotsman: though both of them knew the Husk of Life perfectly well - & for the Kernel - you must go to either Richardson or Rousseau'.

Century: 1700-1799     Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale      Print: Book

  

Tobias Smollett : Ferdinand Count Fathom

'Was I to make a Scale of Novel Writers I should put Richardson first, then Rousseau; after them, but at an immeasurable Distance Charlotte Lenox, Smollet & Fielding. The Female Quixote & Count Fathom I think far before Tom Jones or Joseph Andrews with regard to Body of Story, Height of Colouring, or General Powers of Thinking. Fielding however knew the Shell of Life - and the Kernel is but for a few.'

Century: 1700-1799     Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale      Print: Book

  

Tobias Smollett : The Adventures of Sir Lancelot Greaves

Robert Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, 14-18 October 1793: 'I proceeded on sad & solitary to Hounslow & there gave one shilling for Sir Launcelot Greaves to amuse me on the road.'

Century: 1700-1799     Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey      Print: Book

  

Tobias Smollett : The Adventures of Sir Lancelot Greaves

Robert Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, 14-18 October 1793: 'In the interim you shall have the remarks that occurrd upon reading Sir Launcelot Greaves on the road. Broad coarse humour seems to be the chief excellence of Smollet incidents almost too gross to please & too strange to be probable happen at every inn his heroes stop at & we are sure to find the sailors dialect & the clowns broad Scotch or broad Yorkshire in the place of humour. When he gets upon those subjects which perhaps none but Rousseau knew how to treat he rhapsodizes about charms angels & Hymens & thinks passion & nonsense mean the same. Some strange discovery of birth comes in at the end & all the dramatis personę are tacked together at the altar. Yet with all these faults you are not soon tired of Smollets novels. They insensibly lead you on & if they do not come near the heart certainly play round the head. Humphrey Clinker strikes me as his best — the characters are less outrč & of course more natural. perhaps the epistolary form of it kept him in some bounds.'

Century: 1700-1799     Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey      Print: Book

  

Tobias Smollett : The Adventures of Humphry Clinker

Robert Southey to Grosvenor Charles Bedford, 14-18 October 1793: 'In the interim you shall have the remarks that occurrd upon reading Sir Launcelot Greaves on the road. Broad coarse humour seems to be the chief excellence of Smollet incidents almost too gross to please & too strange to be probable happen at every inn his heroes stop at & we are sure to find the sailors dialect & the clowns broad Scotch or broad Yorkshire in the place of humour. When he gets upon those subjects which perhaps none but Rousseau knew how to treat he rhapsodizes about charms angels & Hymens & thinks passion & nonsense mean the same. Some strange discovery of birth comes in at the end & all the dramatis personę are tacked together at the altar. Yet with all these faults you are not soon tired of Smollets novels. They insensibly lead you on & if they do not come near the heart certainly play round the head. Humphrey Clinker strikes me as his best — the characters are less outrč & of course more natural. perhaps the epistolary form of it kept him in some bounds.'

Century: 1700-1799     Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Southey      Print: Book

  

Tobias Smollett : History

'Everything seems to have been designed to develop the serious fold in her nature. At ten, the poor infant was reading Smollett's History [...] She summed up her impression with scornful lucidity: "There seem to have been more weak kings than wise ones."'

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Isabella Milbanke      Print: Book

  

Tobias Smollett : Peregrine Pickle

18 July 1876: 'Left Paris by tidal service at half-past nine, reaching London before seven... I am reading again, with great delight, Thackeray's Esmond. Since I left England [on ceramics-collecting expedition] I have read Dickens's Tale of Two Cities, Smollett's Peregrine Pickle and Mrs Elliot's Old Court Life in France, various in style, all in their way of much interest to me.'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Charlotte Schreiber      Print: Book

  

Tobias Smollett : Humphrey Clinker

19 November 1880, from Paris: 'I have been reading with great interest Humphrey Clinker, which I like much the best of Smollett's works. I read Peregrine Pickle some years ago on the Continent, and from what I remember of it, I consider it superior to Roderick Random, which I finished a week or two ago. As to Mr. Bramble [in Humphrey Clinker], he takes me back into the last century, and is quite inimitable. I am now reading the Sentimental Journey, which I do not like quite so well.'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Charlotte Schreiber      Print: Book

  

Tobias Smollett : Roderick Random

19 November 1880, from Paris: 'I have been reading with great interest Humphrey Clinker, which I like much the best of Smollett's works. I read Peregrine Pickle some years ago on the Continent, and from what I remember of it, I consider it superior to Roderick Random, which I finished a week or two ago. As to Mr. Bramble [in Humphrey Clinker], he takes me back into the last century, and is quite inimitable. I am now reading the Sentimental Journey, which I do not like quite so well.'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Charlotte Schreiber      Print: Book

  

Tobias Smollett : Peregrine Pickle

19 November 1880, from Paris: 'I have been reading with great interest Humphrey Clinker, which I like much the best of Smollett's works. I read Peregrine Pickle some years ago on the Continent, and from what I remember of it, I consider it superior to Roderick Random, which I finished a week or two ago. As to Mr. Bramble [in Humphrey Clinker], he takes me back into the last century, and is quite inimitable. I am now reading the Sentimental Journey, which I do not like quite so well.'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Charlotte Schreiber      Print: Book

  

Click check box to select all entries on this page:

 

   
   
Green Turtle Web Design