SMOLLETT, Tobias]. The Expedition of Humphry Clinker. London: W. Johnston and B. Collins, 1671 [i.e. 1771]. 3 volumes, 12 o (164 x 98 mm). Half-titles. (Lacks final blank M6 in vol. II.) Contemporary sprinkled calf (rebacked, old morocco spine labels laid down). Provenance : Atkins (contemporary signature on each title) -- F.E. Smith, Earl of Birkenhead (1872-1930, armorial bookplate) -- purchased from Peter Murray Hill, Chelsea, 12 May 1960. FIRST EDITION, generally corresponding with Rothschild's variant A4, with the exception of the date 1671 for 1771 (A1) and page vi being so numbered (A1). Smollet may have written Humphrey Clinker intermittently from 1768 to 1770, and probably completed it while he was staying at his villa in the mountains near Leghorn, in a vain attempt to regain his health. The three small volumes, constituting his only epistolary novel, appeared in the year of his death, and very successfully combine the character interest of a novel with the descriptive detail of a travelogue. Of the eighty-two letters, twenty-seven are written by the Welsh squire, Mathew Bramble, who is a man of feeling rather than a picaro, endowed with much of Smollet's own kind but irascible temperament. Bramble, his servant Clinker, and the rest of their party are on a tour or "expedition" round the country, the scene shifting from Wales to the west country towns of Bristol and Bath, then to London, and eventually to Smollet's native Scotland, before finally returning to the ordered life of the English countryside. Grolier English 56; Rothschild 1925. (3)
SMOLLETT, Tobias]. The Expedition of Humphry Clinker. London: W. Johnston and B. Collins, 1671 [i.e. 1771]. 3 volumes, 12 o (164 x 98 mm). Half-titles. (Lacks final blank M6 in vol. II.) Contemporary sprinkled calf (rebacked, old morocco spine labels laid down). Provenance : Atkins (contemporary signature on each title) -- F.E. Smith, Earl of Birkenhead (1872-1930, armorial bookplate) -- purchased from Peter Murray Hill, Chelsea, 12 May 1960. FIRST EDITION, generally corresponding with Rothschild's variant A4, with the exception of the date 1671 for 1771 (A1) and page vi being so numbered (A1). Smollet may have written Humphrey Clinker intermittently from 1768 to 1770, and probably completed it while he was staying at his villa in the mountains near Leghorn, in a vain attempt to regain his health. The three small volumes, constituting his only epistolary novel, appeared in the year of his death, and very successfully combine the character interest of a novel with the descriptive detail of a travelogue. Of the eighty-two letters, twenty-seven are written by the Welsh squire, Mathew Bramble, who is a man of feeling rather than a picaro, endowed with much of Smollet's own kind but irascible temperament. Bramble, his servant Clinker, and the rest of their party are on a tour or "expedition" round the country, the scene shifting from Wales to the west country towns of Bristol and Bath, then to London, and eventually to Smollet's native Scotland, before finally returning to the ordered life of the English countryside. Grolier English 56; Rothschild 1925. (3)
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