Abstract
In Peregrine Pickle, the extreme hostility of the hero's mother toward him from his earliest days, although an important catalyst in the plot, is never reasonably explained. Her attitude, as well as a number of otherwise ambiguous plot elements, become clear when we deduce that she was pregnant before her marriage. Several clues suggest that Smollett intended until late in the novel to present Peregrine as a bastard but changed his mind as he neared the end. It can be theorized that Smollett feared an accusation of plagiarism in borrowing this detail from Tom Jones, especially after he himself had accused Fielding with reference to Roderick Random. In addition, the life of Richard Savage, particularly as told in Samuel Johnson's elegaic and then-popular biography of his friend, offers many parallels in its story of the unnatural mother and the rejected bastard.
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