Tobias Smollett

Smollett was from this time forward plunged into a sea of pecuniary troubles, wherein, with little mitigation, he remained as long as life lasted. The year 1754, wherein he had...

Smollett, although gaining distinction in other branches of literature, was primarily and essentially a novelist. He wrote history, and wrote it well; drama, and wrote it only p...

Despite all his hastiness of temper and irritability, despite his wife’s lack of management, despite, too, the fact of the burden of debt weighing him down, the Chelsea home mus...

So deeply did grief over the death of his charming young daughter prey on his health and spirits, that there were for a time grave doubts whether his reason had not been slightl...

But after the youthful Tobias had passed those momentous years when the science of suction and the art of following his nose constituted the principal ends of existence, the Sco...

No sooner had Smollett returned to London than he resumed negotiations with reference to his ill–fated tragedy. Authors are proverbially blind to the true merits of their litera...

Smollett’s _Lehrjahre_ were over, his _Wanderjahre_ were about to commence. After passing his examination in Glasgow, he returned for a time to his mother’s house at Dalquharn,...

We reach now the most important period of Smollett’s life. That he had fully realised, long before, the splendid nature of the talents wherewith he was endowed, is more than pro...

Both during his stay in Paris, and on his return, Smollett had been working steadily at his new novel, which he had called _The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle_. The title of all...

Tradition states that Smollett, on being asked on one occasion why he did not write more poetry, replied that he had ‘no time to be a poet.’ The answer can be read in a dual sen...

A hundred and thirty years ago, if one had been asked to name the six great historians then alive, Smollett with marked unanimity would have been mentioned amongst the first. In...

‘Every successful novelist must be more or less a poet, even though he may never have written a line of verse. The quality of imagination is absolutely indispensable to him.......