Cover of Travels Through France And Italy by Tobias Smollett Audiobook Travels Through France And Italy
Audiobook · Fantastica

Travels Through France And Italy

Author
Tobias Smollett
Read by
Finian Silverwood
Language
English
Length
14 hours 8 minutes
ISBN
9781802566963
Published
26 June 2025
Imprint
Fantastica
  • Smollett
  • adventure
  • picaresque
  • classic
  • travel
  • voyages
  • adventure stories
  • history
  • historic
  • mysterious

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Description

Smollett’s sharp-witted, often acerbic account of his 1765 journey across continental Europe, told in letters. Customs, manners, politics, and social conditions in France and Italy — little patience for foreign eccentricities or perceived backwardness. Biting talk of French cuisine, Italian architecture, medical practice, local superstition. Critical and biased, yet a vivid Enlightenment-era portrait through a skeptical Englishman’s ear. Satire with cultural insight; early travel literature spoken as complaint and observation.

Author

Tobias Smollett (1721–1771) wrote picaresque novels of sailors, scoundrels, and a Scotland on the make. A surgeon before he was a novelist, he never lost the medical stare: bodies, ships, and social climbers observed without perfume. Roderick Random, Peregrine Pickle, and Humphry Clinker made English fiction louder, ruder, and more mobile. The comedy is rough; the letters in Clinker still feel like a nation talking to itself.

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