The Expedition Of Humphry Clinker Pdf is An Eighteenth Century Classic Literature Novel By Tobias Smollett.
The Expedition Of Humphry Clinker Summary
This book offers a fascinating picture of eighteenth-century society. Tough, splenetic, and widely experienced, of all the great novelists of his time Tobias Smollett is the one who registered best the bawdy, brutal side of the eighteenth-century life. Towards the end of his life, however, he grew mellower, and “Humphrey Clinker” (1771) is a tale of high good humour. Squire Bramble’s picaresque tour of the Britain of George III has enough eccentric characters and comic adventures for several lifetimes, and a wealth of local colour.
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About Tobias Smollett Author of The Expedition of Humphry Clinker Pdf Book
Tobias Smollett Author of The Expedition of Humphry Clinker Pdf was born in Dalquhurn, now part of Renton, Scotland, to a prosperous family and educated at the University of Glasgow, where he studied to be a physician. Later he joined the British Royal Navy as a surgeon’s mate. He was present at the disastrous battle against the Spanish at Cartagena in 1741.
He married a British woman Anne Lascelles, in Jamaica, 1747,and settled in England. In London, as a writer, he became successful. The Adventures of Roderick Random (1748), a picaresque novel – like most of his books – made him a well known author. It was followed by The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle in 1751. But the failure of The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom (1753) caused financial difficulties for him. Publishing The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves (1762) didn’t help.
Writing poems, plays, travel and history books, essays, satires, doing translations and even becoming a literary critic and magazine editor, Dr. Smollett struggled all his short life against poverty, he traveled to Italy, to regain his health, but died of tuberculosis near Livorno, in 1771. Ironically finishing his masterpiece, The Expedition of Humphry Clinker, a few months before his death.
The Expedition of Humphry Clinker pdf, Paperback, Hardcover Book Information
- Format Paperback | 416 pages
- Dimensions 130 x 201 x 26mm | 336g
- Publication date 26 Jul 1973
- Publisher Penguin Books Ltd
- Imprint Penguin Classics
- Publication City/Country London, United Kingdom
- Language English
- Edition Statement Reprint
- ISBN10 0140430210
- ISBN13 9780140430219
- Bestsellers rank 2,352,522
The Expedition of Humhry Clinker Book Review
Andy Marr
rated it really liked it ·
review of another edition
A bit heavy on sentiment and silliness and rather too light on LOLs, but Smollett here captures the sights, sounds and smells of eighteenth century Britain beautifully, and for that his final novel earns a creditable four stars.
Sherwood Smith
added it ·
review of another edition
Shelves: history-18th-c
Reading the 18th Century novel is very much like riding a rambunctious horse. Actually, bowling along in a carriage; 100 years later, Eliot and the great Victorian novelists who were living with the noisy, fast, smoke-gouting trains would write with nostalgia of the grace and quietude and elegance of carriage travel. But the 17th Century novel depicts it as it more likely was, with is heat, travel-sickness from the jolts, and frequent breakdowns and overturns in the terrible roads, with highwaymen everywhere as there was no real law and order on the highway.
Matthew Bramble, his spinster sister, his well-bred niece and nephew, and their servants, set out from Wales to travel all over England and Scotland. Along the way they encounter many odd characters, and as they write home to friends about their adventures, the reader gets an agreeable picture of the action from several points-of-view. Funniest are the spinster sister’s letters, with their Freudrian misspellings, and the even more unintentionally bawdy and scatological gaspers of Ms. Jenkins, her maid.
Duels that go awry, savage essays on hypocrisy in high society and about how fast cities change and become unrecognizable (and about the taste for speed with which city drivers careen their vehicles through London streets), about filthy germ-spreading habits in supposedly healthful spas (do NOT read the section on Bath right before a meal!), will whipsaw the reader between remote concerns and contemporary reactions. Smollett also writes himself into the story, as do 18th Century authors, and he doesn’t forget to villify current writers, politicians, and other leaders against whom he has a grudge— and likewise to drape in flattering terms and oblique names his friends.
The group finds one Humphrey Clinker, an earnest young man with a religious bent. When he first drives for the family, his butt is hanging out of his rags, and the maid comments that she rather likes the sight. At the end, he turns out to be Bramble’s long lost natural son, there are three weddings, and everyone is happy— with some very odd marriage customs described.
It’s a deliciously fun novel, a vivid picture of England and Scotland at the time, and an excellent insight into how the times were changing toward modernity even then. Smollet’s interests range between a vast and fascinating number of subjects: marriage customs, courting, medical technology (or lack of same); politics; the roads; the history of language (a good bit is when two characters are discussing how the words in Shakespear’s plays have changed meaning); food; the strange justice system; education; and, of course, the dangers of travel.
A.L. Stumo
rated it it was amazing
How one book can break so many of the accepted conventions of writing and still be a good read is testimony to Mr. Smollett’s genius. This book is epistolary and breaks the show don’t tell rule in every scene, is told from several viewpoints (some scenes you piece together from retellings by the various narrators like Rashomon), has long rambling passages of philosophy (yet uses that for character development in a unique manner) and has no plot arc (instead having a plot maze).
Yet at the end of the plot maze, I was astounded at how each character was satisfied in their quest and all the ends bound together as well as any Dickens novel. I found myself really liking many of these characters as I got to know them better and was truly glad for them as they found health and happiness.
I was also blow away by how beautifully constructed this non-linear view of the “vanity fair” to use Mr. Thackeray’s phrase. And by how Humphry the happy element (happy in the old sense of lucky or chance) contributes to make this book come together and to banish boredom, as he and the other characters are displayed to their advantage and disadvantage.
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