Blue and white patterned cloth binding. Red title plate and gilt title on the spine.

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Tobias Smollett’s final masterpiece, The Expedition of Humphry Clinker, a hilarious road-trip through Georgian Britain.

The Expedition of Humphry Clinker was the last of the picaresque novels of Tobias Smollett, published in London on 17 June 1771 (just three months before Smollett’s death), and is considered by many to be his best and funniest work. It is an epistolary novel, presented in the form of letters written by six characters: Matthew Bramble, a Welsh Squire; his sister Tabitha; their niece Lydia and nephew Jeremy Melford; Tabitha’s maid Winifred Jenkins; and Lydia’s suitor Wilson. Much of the comedy arises from differences in the descriptions of the same events and places seen by the participants.

The first gathering was wrongly collated in that the List of Engravings followed the introduction instead of the title-leaf. This edition is the first gathering corrected.

Tobias George Smollett (baptized 19 March 1721 – 17 September 1771) was a Scottish novelist, surgeon, critic and playwright. He was best known for picaresque novels such as The Adventures of Roderick Random (1748), The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle (1751) and The Expedition of Humphry Clinker (1771), which influenced later novelists, including Charles Dickens. His novels were liberally altered by contemporary printers; an authoritative edition of each was edited by Dr O. M. Brack Jr and others.