Smollett Tobias - The adventures of Peregrine Pickle: in which are included Memoirs of a Lady of Quality

THE WORKS OF TOBIAS SMOLLETT

The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle

THE WORKS OF TOBIAS SMOLLETT

Alexander Pettit, General Editor
University of North Texas

O M Brack, Jr., Textual Editor
Arizona State University

Ashley Brookner Bender, Associate Editor
University of North Texas

This edition includes all of the works by which Tobias Smollett was best known in his own day and by which he most deserves to be remembered.
The edition conforms to the highest standards of textual and editorial scholarship. Individual volumes provide carefully prepared texts together with biographical and historical introductions and extensive explanatory notes.

EDITORIAL BOARD

Martin C. Battestin, University of Virginia
Jerry C. Beasley, University of Delaware
Barbara Benedict, Trinity College, Hartford
Kevin L. Cope, Louisiana State University
Patricia Craddock, University of Florida
Aileen Douglas, Trinity College, Dublin
William Kupersmith, University of Iowa
James E. May, Penn State University-DuBois
Thomas R. Preston, University of North Texas
John V. Price, University of Edinburgh
Albert J. Rivero, Marquette University
Patrick Spedding, Monash University
David L. Vander Meulen, University of Virginia

Frontispiece, after Fuseli, to the fourth edition, volume 1 [Gamaliel Pickle Observes Commodore Trunnion and Lieutenant Hatchway Duel at the Inn]. (Designed by Henry Fuseli, engraved by an anonymous engraver, and reproduced from a copy held by the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.)

In which are included,
Memoirs of a Lady of Quality

TOBIAS SMOLLETT

Introduction and Notes by

JOHN P. ZOMCHICK

GEORGE S. ROUSSEAU

The Text Edited by

O M BRACK, JR.

W. H. KEITHLEY

2014 by the University of Georgia Press

Athens, Georgia 30602

www.ugapress.org

All rights reserved

Set in Janson Text by Graphic Composition, Inc., Bogart, Georgia
Printed and bound by Thomson-Shore, Inc.
The paper in this book meets the guidelines for
permanence and durability of the Committee on
Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the
Council on Library Resources.

Printed in the United States of America

13 14 15 16 17 c 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Smollett, T. (Tobias), 1721-1771.

The adventures of Peregrine Pickle : in which are included, memoirs of a
Lady of Quality / Tobias Smollett ; Introduction and Notes by John P. Zomchick,
George S. Rousseau ; The Text Edited by O M Brack, Jr., W. H. Keithley.
pages cm. (The Works of Tobias Smollett)
Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN-13: 978-0-8203-4525-3 (hardcover : alk. paper)

ISBN-10: 0-8203-4525-3 (hardcover : alk. paper)

I. Zomchick, John P. II. Rousseau, G. S. (George Sebastian)

III. Brack, O M editor of compilation. IV. Title.

PR3694.P4 2014

823.5dc23

2013011546

British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data available

ISBN for digital edition: 978-0-8203-4658-8

TO THE MEMORY OF
O M Skip Brack, Jr.,

AND TO

Katherine Hope Morgan, Nathaniel David Morgan,
Sarah Elizabeth Zomchick, and Simon Anthony Zomchick

The title pages to volumes 1 through 4 of the first edition (London, 1751) are reproduced from a copy owned by O M Brack, Jr. Frontispieces from the fourth edition (London, 1769), designed by Henry Fuseli (17451825) and engraved by an anonymous engraver, are reproduced from a copy held by the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. The descriptive titles to these illustrations are taken from D. H. Weinglass, Prints and Engraved Illustrations by and after Henry Fuseli: A Catalogue Raisonn (Aldershot, UK: Scolar Press, 1994). (Weinglass [1421] records another state of the fourth edition, with engravings of Fuselis designs by Charles Grignion [17211810].) The illustrations by Thomas Rowlandson (17571827) are from an undated and privately bound volume entitled Rowlands [sic] Illustrations to Smollett, held by the College of William and Mary and comprising, among other entries, select illustrations attributed to an edition of Peregrine Pickle said to have been published in 1796 by J. Sibbald (London). We have been unable to locate an eighteenth-century edition of Peregrine Pickle with illustrations by Rowlandson published by Sibbald. The illustrations by Richard Corbould (17571831) are from prints held by the British Museum. Several appeared in an edition of the novel printed for C. Cooke (1799?). The nineteenth-century illustrations by George Cruikshank are reproduced from Illustrations of Smollett, Fielding, and Goldsmith, in a Series of Forty-one Plates (London, 1832), held by the Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Seven years passed between the initial publication of The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle. In which are included, Memoirs of a Lady of Quality in 1751 and the appearance of the much revised second edition, to which Smollett added a brief Advertisement defending his work and characterizing his revisions. To the second edition he also added an exchange of letters between Lady Vane and an unnamed Lord by way of preface to volume 3, which contained the formers memoirs. It would be seven more years before the appearance of the third edition in 1765. The last edition to appear in Smolletts lifetime came four years later, in 1769. For the next 160 years, subsequent editions of Peregrine Pickle appeared with a dependable regularity, if not quite as frequently as editions of Roderick Random and Humphry Clinker. Although the initial public reception of the novel was not what the young and recently successful novelist had hoped it would be, by the end of the eighteenth century sixteen editions had appeared. It had been translated into French (1753), German (1753), Danish (1787), and, partially, Russian (1788). In 1815 a Dutch translation appeared. Presumably, the book that Dickenss David Copperfield recalled as among the only and constant comforts of his youth continued to appeal to many readers who, like the fictional Copperfield, sought comfort or amusement in Smolletts tale of youthful adventures, disillusionment, and ultimate triumph.

Smolletts second novel has always been included in the major editions of his Works. Robert Anderson, the editor of the first major edition of Smolletts Works (1796) and an early biographer, justified the novels inclusion by calling it a first-rate novel, whose merits far exceed the modern puny productions of frivolous fashion and sickly sentiment, which load the shelves of our circulating libraries. Despite the works length and lingering concerns about its potential harmful effects on young, ignorant, and idle readers, Peregrine Pickle was included in all major editions of Smolletts works from the late eighteenth into the early twentieth century. Following closely upon Andersons edition was John Moores, another early biographer and friend of the author (1797). Thereafter followed editions by Thomas Roscoe (1836), David Herbert (1870), James P. Browne (1872), George Saintsbury (18991900), W. E. Henley and Thomas Seccombe (18991901), and George Maynardier (1902). Notable collected editions of novels, in which