Travels through France and Italy
Encyclopedia
Travels through France and Italy is travel literature
Travel literature
Travel literature is travel writing of literary value. Travel literature typically records the experiences of an author touring a place for the pleasure of travel. An individual work is sometimes called a travelogue or itinerary. Travel literature may be cross-cultural or transnational in focus, or...

 by Tobias Smollett
Tobias Smollett
Tobias George Smollett was a Scottish poet and author. He was best known for his picaresque novels, such as The Adventures of Roderick Random and The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle , which influenced later novelists such as Charles Dickens.-Life:Smollett was born at Dalquhurn, now part of Renton,...

 published in 1766.

After suffering the loss of his only child, 15-year-old Elizabeth, in April of 1763, Smollett left England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 in June of that year. Together with his wife, he traveled across France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 to Nice
Nice
Nice is the fifth most populous city in France, after Paris, Marseille, Lyon and Toulouse, with a population of 348,721 within its administrative limits on a land area of . The urban area of Nice extends beyond the administrative city limits with a population of more than 955,000 on an area of...

. In the autumn of the next year, he visited Genoa
Genoa
Genoa |Ligurian]] Zena ; Latin and, archaically, English Genua) is a city and an important seaport in northern Italy, the capital of the Province of Genoa and of the region of Liguria....

, Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...

, Florence
Florence
Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area....

 and other towns of Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

. After staying in Nice for the winter he returned to London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

 by June 1765. Travels through France and Italy is his account of this journey.

Smollett describes in great detail the natural phenomena, history, social life, economics, diet and morals of the places he visited. Smollett had a lively and pertinacious curiosity, and, as his novels prove, a very quick eye. He foresaw the merits of Cannes
Cannes
Cannes is one of the best-known cities of the French Riviera, a busy tourist destination and host of the annual Cannes Film Festival. It is a Commune of France in the Alpes-Maritimes department....

, then a small village, as a health-resort, and the possibilities of the Corniche
Corniche
The word corniche typically refers to a road on the side of a cliff or mountain, with the ground rising on one side of the road and falling away on the other...

 road.

The writing is often characterized by spleen, acerbity and quarrelsomeness. Smollett quarrels with innkeepers, postilions and fellow travelers and holds many (though by no means all) foreigners he meets in contempt. He derides the Roman Catholic faith, dueling, petty and proud nobility, such domestic arrangements as the cicisbeo
Cicisbeo
In 18th- and 19th-century Italy, the cicisbeo , or Cavalier Servente, was the professed gallant and lover of a married woman, who attended her at public entertainments, to church and other occasions and had privileged access to his mistress. The arrangement is comparable to the Spanish cortejo or...

, and many other French and Italian customs.

Laurence Sterne
Laurence Sterne
Laurence Sterne was an Irish novelist and an Anglican clergyman. He is best known for his novels The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, and A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy; but he also published many sermons, wrote memoirs, and was involved in local politics...

, who met Smollett in Italy, satirized Smollett's jaundiced attitude in the character of Smelfungus
Smelfungus
Smelfungus is a name given by Laurence Sterne to Tobias Smollett as author of a volume of Travels through France and Italy, for the snarling abuse he heaps on the institutions and customs of the countries he visited....

 in A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy
A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy
A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy is a novel by the Irish-born English author Laurence Sterne, written and first published in 1768, as Sterne was facing death. In 1765, Sterne travelled through France and Italy as far south as Naples, and after returning determined to describe his...

, which was written in part as an answer to Smollett's book.

Sources and external links

  • Travels through France and Italy, volume XI of The Works of Tobias Smollett, edited by William Ernest Henley
    William Ernest Henley
    William Ernest Henley was an English poet, critic and editor, best remembered for his 1875 poem "Invictus".-Life and career:...

    , Scribner's sons, 1900. Introduction by Thomas Seccombe
    Thomas Seccombe
    Thomas Seccombe was a miscellaneous English writer and, from 1891 to 1901, assistant editor of the Dictionary of National Biography, writing over 700 entries. Educated at Felsted and Balliol College, Oxford, taking a first in Modern History in 1889.-Works:*Twelve Bad Men *The Age of Johnson *The...

    . From Google Books.
  • Frank Felsenstein, ed. (1999), Travels through France and Italy, Oxford World's Classics, ISBN 0-19-283634-X. Introduction. 60-pages of footnotes.
  • "Travels through France and Italy". II. Fielding and Smollett. Vol. 10. The Age of Johnson. The Cambridge History of English and American Literature
    The Cambridge History of English and American Literature
    The Cambridge History of English and American Literature was originally published by Cambridge University Press in 1907–1921. The 18 volumes include 303 chapters and more than 11,000 pages edited and written by a worldwide panel of 171 leading scholars and thinkers of the early twentieth century...

    (1907–21).
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