The Expedition of Humphry Clinker by Tobias Smollett

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Expedition of Humphry Clinkerby Tobias Smollett Rivka Swenson T obiasS mollett. The Expedition of Humphry Clinker, 2nded., ed. Evan Gottlieb. New York: W. W. Norton, 2015. Pp. xv + 552. $13.48. New editions make a difference; indeed they do as much to shape the course of the conversation as many a monograph, journal issue, or volume of essays. When a formerly unknown or forgotten "old book" sees a modern edition for the first time, suddenly scholars start writing about it, students start reading it, and the book becomes part of the conversation for the long term. And yet, university administrators tend to devalue the work of editing primary texts, perhaps especially those that are designed in large part for classroom teaching, and other scholars may be less likely to review [End Page 198]editions when so many monographs and essay collections need reviewing. This is unfortunate because well-done editions are what every scholar-teacher both wants and needs, and we owe it to ourselves, our colleagues, and our students to acknowledge in print the enormous amount of work (some inspired, some scholarly, some pedagogical, some mere drudgery) that goes into performing the priceless service of editing primary texts. Clinkeris not unknown, and it may be a stretch to say it has been forgotten, but Smollett has been generally neglected by critics in recent decades, especially in comparison to his peers (Samuel Richardson, Henry Fielding, and, more recently, reclaimed authors such as Eliza Haywood), a fact all the more shocking in light of Smollett's prominence and popularity in his own time, his influence on the other major contemporary novelists, and indeed his contribution to the rise of the novel. Additionally, while Smollett is not the first Scot to have written vernacular prose fiction, he is Scotland's first novelist qua novelist. While Clinkerhas not been neglected by editors (see, for instance, editions from University of Georgia Press [1990], Penguin [2008], and Oxford Classics [2009]), the last Norton Critical Edition appeared some thirty-five years ago. Mr. Gottlieb's new edition of Clinker, the text of which is based on the previous Norton Critical Edition but which corrects several of its typographical errors, stands to revitalize Smollett studies by making this classic text—immensely popular in its own time, too little read in ours—freshly available, in the second decade of the twenty-first century to a new generation of readers. And what a wonderful service that is: Clinker, Smollett's final and arguably his finest novel is a book that frankly deserves to find new readers under any cover it can. May we hope Smollett's other novels will be next? Impressively, the edition's footnotes are as generous in number—very few pages pass without a footnote, or, more typically, footnotes, plural—as they are pithily useful to readers of all ranges. The footnotes for page 49, for "fizzogmony," "Harry King's Row" / "Crashit" / "Hottogon" / "Bloody Buildings," "pennorth," and "flegm" / "farthing" are representative: 1. Physiognomy, i.e., facial features and appearance. 2. Probably Harlequin's row, so named for its mix of brick and stone facades. "Crashit": likely the Royal Crescent. "Hottogon": the Octagon Chapel in Milsom Street, finished in 1676 [ sic], which was a fashionable place of worship. "Bloody Buildings": likely the Bladud Buildings, named after Bath's legendary founder and located in Broad Street. 3. I.e., a penny's worth, meaning a very small amount of something. 4. A variation on the proverb "not worth a brass farthing." A farthing was a coin worth one-quarter of a British penny. "Flegm": i.e., phlegm, one of the four bodily humors, associated with calmness and dispassion. While this edition takes a different tack than some of its competitors (by excluding, for instance, a glossary of Win's linguistic foibles), almost every page has two to four such footnotes, carefully rendered, like Mr. Gottlieb's judicious Preface, to enlighten Smollett's twenty-first-century readers. The other accompanying material is no less useful. The "Backgrounds" and "Contexts" section does good things within a tight compass just shy of twenty [End Page 199]pages. A few helpful pages here, a...