Tobias Smollett: 62 books

Roderick “Rory” Random, shunned by his family, goes almost everywhere trying to earn his status as a gentleman. After an abusive education, he embarks on a global series of misadventures, many involving wealthy women. Random’s Royal Navy experiences are based on those of the author, who practically invented the English “picaresque novel” in this 1748 romp.

Sir Launcelot is virtuous and strange, and he is surrounded by a Smollettian menagerie whose various jargons are part of this novel's linguistic virtuosity and satire. He is an eighteenth-century gentleman who rides about the country in armour, attended by his comic squire, Timothy Crabshaw, redressing grievances.

The novel tells the life story of Roderick Random, who was born to a Scottish gentleman and a lower-class woman and is thus shunned by his father's family. His mother dies soon after giving birth and his father is driven mad with grief. Random's paternal grandfather coerces a local school master into providing free education for the boy, who becomes popular with his classmates.

Travelogue by one of the most popular novelists of the 18th century. The Introduction begins: "Many pens have been burnished this year of grace for the purpose of celebrating with befitting honour the second centenary of the birth of Henry Fielding; but it is more than doubtful if, when the right date occurs in March 1921, anything like the same."

Tobias George Smollett (1721 – 1771) was a Scottish poet and author. He was best known for his picaresque novels, such as The Adventures of Roderick Random (1748) and The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle (1751), which influenced later novelists such as Charles Dickens. The Adventures of Roderick...

Smollett's satire on human cruelty, inanity and voracity, first published in 1751. It is the story of luck and bad luck of the egotistical "Peregrine Pickle", who was discarded by his parents and hated by his brother. It provides a comic and sarcastic portrayal of European society. The novel is...