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The Naval Scenes in Roderick Random

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Lewis Mansfield Knapp
Lewis Mansfield Knapp*
Affiliation:
Williams College
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Extract

Smollett's use of life and scenes in the British navy in the early 1740's in his first novel has long been recognized as an original and important contribution to the materials of English fiction. Chapters 24–38 of Roderick Random with their abundant detail, revealing so graphically the brutalities, disease, and official incompetence involved in the conduct of naval affairs in the expedition to Carthagena 1740–41, have not only impressed Smollett's critics but have offered a firm point of departure for the conjectures of his biographers. Yet although these chapters are successful as realistic art, and suggestive in their biographical implications, there always arises the difficult question of how much of this vivid writing is historical fact and how much is fiction. This question must be the concern of critics in determining Smollett's method in the selection of his materials, and it is central to his biography.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 49 , Issue 2 , June 1934 , pp. 593 - 598
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1934

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References

1 For a general consideration of the problem, see Max Leuschel's Autobiographisches in Smollett's Roderick Random (Leipzig, 1903), p. 35 ff.

2 The Miscellaneous Works of Tobias Smollett, M.D. (Edinburgh, 1820), i, 18.

3 The Mariner's Mirror The Journal of the Society for Nautical Research x (1924), 94 ff.—Cambridge University Press, 1925.

4 The Shakespeare Head Edition of Smollett's Novels, Blackwell, (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1925–26), Roderick Random, ii, 328.

5 P.R.O. Ad 33/354 Chichester, No. 188.

6 P.R.O. Ad 33/410 Chichester, No. 188.

7 Roderick Random, Ch. 34.

8 A Complete History of England … 4 vols., 1757–58, iv, 607 ff.

9 A Compendium of Authentic and Entertaining Voyages, 2d ed. (London, 1766), v, 313–342.

10 The Letters of Tobias Smollett, M.D. ed. E. S. Noyes (Harvard Press, 1926), p. 81.

11 Roderick Random, Ch. 30.

12 P.R.O. Ad 51/4147.—Photostats of the two journals are in my possession. These documents were not discovered apparently by W.G.P., author of the essay in The Mariner's Mirror.

13 Roderick Random, Ch. 10.

14 Ibid., Ch. 34.

15 Ibid., Ch. 28.

16 Ibid., Ch. 28.

17 Ibid., Ch. 28.

18 Ibid., Ch. 29.

19 Ibid., Ch. 32.

20 Ibid., Ch. 34.