21 Facts About Tobias Smollett

1.

Tobias George Smollett was a Scottish novelist, surgeon, critic and playwright.

2.

Tobias Smollett was best known for picaresque novels such as The Adventures of Roderick Random, The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle and The Expedition of Humphry Clinker, which influenced later novelists, including Charles Dickens.

3.

Tobias Smollett's novels were liberally altered by contemporary printers; an authoritative edition of each was edited by Dr O M Brack Jr and others.

4.

Tobias Smollett was the fourth son of Archibald Smollett of Bonhill, a judge and landowner, laird of Bonhill, living at Dalquhurn on the River Leven, who died about 1726, when Smollett was just five years old.

5.

Tobias Smollett had a brother, Captain James Smollett, and a sister, Jean Smollett, who married Alexander Telfair of Symington, Ayrshire.

6.

Jean succeeded to Bonhill after the death of her cousin-german, Mr Commissary Tobias Smollett, and resumed her maiden name of Tobias Smollett in 1780.

7.

Tobias Smollett married a wealthy Jamaican heiress, Anne "Nancy" Lascelles.

8.

Tobias Smollett was a daughter of William Lascelles, but was unable to access her inheritance as it was invested in land and slaves.

9.

Tobias Smollett translated famous works of the Enlightenment from other European languages.

10.

Tobias Smollett's first published work in 1746 was a poem about the Battle of Culloden entitled "The Tears of Scotland".

11.

Tobias Smollett's poetry was described as "delicate, sweet and murmurs as a stream".

12.

Tobias Smollett's novels were published by the well-known London bookseller Andrew Millar.

13.

Tobias Smollett became considered as a 'man of letters' and associated with such figures as David Garrick, Laurence Sterne, Oliver Goldsmith, and Samuel Johnson, whom he famously nicknamed "that Great Cham of literature".

14.

Tobias Smollett then began what he regarded as his major work, A Complete History of England which helped recoup his finances, along with profits from his only performed play, a farce, The Reprisal of the Tars of Old England.

15.

In 1763, Tobias Smollett was ill, perhaps with tuberculosis, and suffered the loss of his only child at the age of 15.

16.

Tobias Smollett gave up his editorships and, with his wife Nancy, went to Europe, which led to the publication of Travels Through France and Italy.

17.

Tobias Smollett published The History and Adventures of an Atom, which gave his opinion of British politics during the Seven Years' War in the guise of a tale from ancient Japan.

18.

In 1768, the year he moved to Italy, Tobias Smollett entrusted Robert Cunninghame Graham of Gartmore with selling off the slaves he still owned in Jamaica.

19.

Tobias Smollett had for some time been suffering from an intestinal disorder.

20.

Tobias Smollett is one of the 16 Scottish writers and poets depicted on the lower section of the Scott Monument in Princes Street, Edinburgh.

21.

Tobias Smollett appears on the far left side of the east face.