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Humphry ClinkerHumphry Clinker Reading Order
The Expedition of Humphry Clinker (1771) by Tobias Smollett is the most accessible and most warmly comic of Smollett's novels and one of the great epistolary novels in English — an account of a tour through Britain made by the Bramble family (the irascible, gout-ridden Matthew Bramble, his sister Tabitha, her maid Win Jenkins, his niece Lydia, and his nephew Jery), with the same events described in letters written by different family members who perceive them very differently. Smollett uses the divergent perspectives to comic effect — Matthew's angry, satirical letters about English cities contrast with Lydia's romantic, sentimental ones about the same scenes; Win Jenkins's letters are comic in their phonetic spelling and misused words; Tabitha's letters reveal her matrimonial scheming. Humphry Clinker himself appears late in the novel — a ragged beggar taken on as a servant who turns out to be Matthew's illegitimate son — and the novel ends with a series of marriages and revelations. It is Smollett's farewell to English literature (he died in the same year it was published) and the most humane and affectionate of his novels.
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Humphry Clinker (1771)
Complete Humphry Clinker Book List
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Humphry Clinker
Tobias Smollett·1771
Humphry Clinker — Frequently Asked Questions
How does Humphry Clinker compare to Smollett's other novels?
Smollett's earlier novels — Roderick Random (1748), Peregrine Pickle (1751), Ferdinand Count Fathom (1753) — are picaresque novels in the tradition of Le Sage and Fielding, organized around a male protagonist's adventures across Britain and Europe. They are darker, more satirical, and more violent than Humphry Clinker; Peregrine Pickle in particular has passages of social savagery that are quite different from the warmth of Clinker. Humphry Clinker's epistolary form — borrowed from Richardson — allows Smollett to organize the novel around multiple perspectives rather than a single protagonist, which produces a more various and comic effect. Most readers find Humphry Clinker the most immediately pleasurable of Smollett's novels, though the earlier picaresque novels are also significant.
What is Smollett's satire aimed at?
Smollett's satire in Humphry Clinker is primarily aimed at English social pretension — the fashionable society of Bath and London, the vulgarity of the newly wealthy, the crowds and noise and filth of urban England — as seen through Matthew Bramble's dyspeptic letters. Bramble is presented as a curmudgeon whose complaints are usually justified: the mineral waters at Bath are contaminated, London is overcrowded, and the fashion for public entertainments has produced a culture of show rather than substance. Scotland, by contrast, is presented more favorably — Smollett was a Scot, and his portrait of Scottish society (Edinburgh, the Highlands) is noticeably more affectionate than his portrait of England.
What is the significance of the different letter-writers in Humphry Clinker?
The multiple letter-writers are the novel's greatest formal achievement. Matthew Bramble sees everything in terms of social decay and physical discomfort — his perspective is sharp, satirical, and frequently accurate. Lydia Melford sees everything romantically and finds the same scenes beautiful that her uncle finds disgusting. Jery Bramble narrates with more detachment and is the most reliable observer. Win Jenkins's phonetic spelling ('Bath, a ity of vices') provides comic contrast with the more educated voices. Tabitha Bramble's letters reveal her frantic matrimonial maneuvering. The same events filtered through these five different perspectives produce a kind of prismatic portrait of Britain that no single narrator could provide.
Why is the novel called 'Humphry Clinker' if Humphry is not the main character?
Humphry Clinker appears relatively late in the novel and plays a limited narrative role — he is a ragged beggar pressed into service as a postilion who becomes Matthew Bramble's manservant, converts to Methodism, and is eventually discovered to be Bramble's illegitimate son. He is the novel's moral center rather than its protagonist: his genuine goodness and his Methodist piety represent an ethical alternative to the social satire that dominates the rest of the novel. Smollett's choice of title has been read as a deliberate contrast with Fielding's Tom Jones — where Fielding's foundling is a good-hearted rake who eventually inherits, Smollett's is a pious laborer who is content with his modest place. The title calls attention to the class of person who is usually invisible in the epistolary novel.
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