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UK Holidays - The Expedition of Humphry Clinker (English Library)
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List Price: $13.00
Our Price: $13.00
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Penguin Classics
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9780140430219
ISBN: 0140430210
Label: Penguin Classics
Manufacturer: Penguin Classics
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 416
Publication Date: 1967-05-30
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Studio: Penguin Classics
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Editorial Reviews:
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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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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Pleasant surprise
Comment: In David McCullough's fine "John Adams" he mentions this was one of Adams' favorite books and, upon reading it, McCullough enjoyed it so much he read it twice. On that recommendation I bought it sight unseen. When it arrived I thought I'd made a mistake. A novel made up entirely of letters (correspondence) written in less than easy to penetrate 18th century English. But after slogging through the first dozen pages or so I admit I got hooked. The characters are wonderful and the story line can get very funny. A wonderful window on the 1760s in Great Britain. Using letters to tell the story is clever, although the plot line is constantly told in past tense and there is some redundancy. At any rate, it was worth the effort.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Tobias or not Tobias - indeed Tobias
Comment: Smollett could dream up some amazing characters! The interactions among them runs from hilarious to ridiculous but always enjoyable. If you have not read any of his books, just pick one and start in - you will have found yourself a new author to collect.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Great book, poor edition
Comment: I was so disappointed in this Penguin edition. The Penguin Classics usually do a wonderful job with notes at the back, explaining terms and references that are obscure to modern readers. This is a delightful story but the 18th C vocabulary can be tough going, even for those of us accustomed to reading such books. Penguin has left far too many terms unexplained. Unless you've got a Latin reference book, an OED, and historical slang reference books at hand, you're probably going to get frustrated with the language--and you'll miss a great deal of the humor. This edition does Smollett a great disservice. I highly recommend HUMPRHY CLINKER, but I'd advise anyone who isn't an 18th C scholar to buy the Norton Critical Edition instead.
Customer Rating:
Summary: All's Well....
Comment: I challenge anyone to read this picaresque travelogue and not be overcome with laughter in at least three places. I don't care how jaded and well-read you may (or may not) be. If you have even a pittance of sense for the absurdities of the human situation, this book will catch you unawares in its jabbing yet light-hearted apercus to which every mortal can relate---Unless you are one particular reviewer who seems to have stepped out of Victorian spinsterhood to berate Smollett for a Swiftean obsession with dirt, which is twaddle and tripe. This aspect forms only a small part of the novel as a whole. But I digress; this review shall not become an assault on Victorian spinsterhood.
If this book reminds me of anything (besides earlier Smollett works), it is the lighter plays of Shakespeare such as Much Ado About Nothing and All's Well That Ends Well, particularly the former, full of coincidences bordering on farce, and ending, well, like Much Ado about Nothing ends, if you'll recall the last scene.
I'm not equating Smollett with Shakespeare. But I AM saying that Humphrey Clinker is just as funny, warm hearted and insightful regarding the human condition as these plays, just perhaps a bit less profound and virtuosic.
Enough said, these long-winded reviews drive one batty. Read this book and have some fun, and come away reflecting on the foibles of us all.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Wickedly funny and very readable.
Comment: Humphrey Clinker is a 17th century epistolary novel which tells the tale of the Bramble family and its travels through England and Scotland. The letters are written by Matthew Bramble, the family head; Tabitha Bramble, his increasingly desperate unmarried sister; Winifred Jenkins, Tabitha Bramble's servant; Jery Melford, Matthew's Oxford educated nephew; and Lydia Melford, the lovestruck niece who most unfortunately fell for an actor.
The novel is rich and has many layers. The travels afford Smollet a fine device for social satire and observation. Smollet is best-known for his satiric writing, and he does have a serious bite. The way that he skewers the spas at Bath or (more gently) teases the English for their prejudices about Scotland are classic moments and very funny.
I think that in all the focus on the satire, however, something gets forgotten about the genuine warmth for the characters. I had been a little bit hesitant about reading Smollett in the past because of his legendary satiric harshness in books like Roderick Random and Peregrine Pickle. I only picked this up after reading an article on Smollet which opined that Humphrey Clinker was a much more mature novel than the early works-- not so much a picaresque satire and more of a full novel which functions on many levels. For all that Smollet does not gloss over the faults of his characters, there is still the feeling that he treats them with affection. It is difficult not to read Smollet into the character of Matthew Bramble. The grumpy gout-ridden old man who takes issue with nearly everything is eventually capable of some very genuine acts of kindness.
I also thought that it was worth mentioning that the book is very readable. It is easy to be frightened off by the 18th century-ness of it all. I read an unedited edition without notes, and had no trouble following the prose. I had to look a few words up and spend a little more time on some of the sections, but it still was relatively easy to read. I found that I did not mind spending more time with the book-- each letter was a rich source of observation, double entendres, warmth and humor.
I would recommend this book to all readers, not just the student of the 18th century novel. Particularly if you are a fan of writers like Dickens you may enjoy stretching your time period a little bit and picking up The Expedition of Humphrey Clinker.
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