Tobias Smollett’s and John Campbell’s Contributions to the American Volumes in The Modern Part of an Universal History

Abstract

ABSTRACT The second edition of the influential An Universal History (1747–1754) was entitled The Modern Part of an Universal History (1759–1766). Modern Part’s volumes 38–41, in octavo, cover the discoveries, settlements and conquests of the Americas. These American volumes were written, according to Guido Abbattista, by the mid-eighteenth-century Scottish-born historian, John Campbell (1708–1775). Tobias Smollett (1711–1771) will be shown, however, to be a significant contributor to the American volumes, which is most evident in passages or sections that draw from his histories, A Complete History of England (1757–1758, 2nd edition 1758–1760) and Continuation of the History of England (1760–1765). Smollett’s contributions to the American volumes likely prompted him to borrow from them to write his American section in his later work, The Present State of All Nations (1768–1769). Smollett’s politics and correspondence, along with textual and stylometric analysis, specifically the “rolling classify” function in R, will demonstrate Smollett’s contributions to Modern Part’s American volumes.