Travels through France and Italy book

Tobias Smollett travelled through Europe with his wife in 1763-65 in a journey

designed to recover his mental and physical health after the death of their

daughter. The resulting travel narrative provoked controversy and anger in the

eighteenth century, when it was often negatively compared to Laurence Sterne’s

fictional European travels in A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy.

Unlike Sterne’s sensitive hero, Smollett is argumentative, acerbic, and often

contemptuous of local customs.

In addition to a critical introduction, this edition provides extensive

annotation and appendices with material on Smollett’s correspondence, the

book’s reception in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, related travel

writing, and Smollett’s infamous satirization as “Smelfungus” in Sterne’s A

Sentimental Journey.