The Expedition of Humphry Clinker

If you liked The Pickwick Papers you'll probably enjoy this too , since Charles Dickens first novel and bestseller made his career. The writer was a huge fan of Dr. Tobias Smollett when young and the influence is notable since having read both picaresque novels and enormously fond of each . ( The Ex......more

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.......more

"The pills are good for nothing," fumes the heroic hypochondriac Bramble in one of your better opening sentences, and we're off on a picaresque tour of all the cliches of the 1700s and 1800s. Featuring such greatest hits as: - Ridiculous coincidences! - People who turn out to be of higher birth than t......more

How many novels have you read about an ostler? Humphrey Clinker, hero of this daring fiction, was one; an ostler being a stableman at an inn. For that matter, how many novels have you read that were published in 1771? Given when it was published, count this as one amazingly creative work of fiction. H......more

The Expedition of Humphry Clinker is an early epistolary novel, published in 1771. In a series of letters from a group of five people, gentry and one servant, it tells the tale of a journey undertaken around England over a period of months by a Welsh squire; his sister, niece, and nephew; and their......more