What one reviewer said about The Life and Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves (Penguin Classics) by Tobias George Smollett, Peter Wagner:
Launcelot Greaves, Tobias Smollett's quixotic character, takes you on a hilarious journey filled with wonderfully funny scenes and characters. The book moves at the leisurely pace Smollett and Fielding made such excellent use of in their novels. Not only does Smollet amuse and surprise in this novel, but he also provides a insightful commentary on class, primogeniture and the state of the nobility in 18th-century England. This book you finish with a grin and a wistful sigh, because you don't want the story to end, a novel both funny and thoughtful in the best of senses.
Begins:
It was on the great northern road from York to London, about the beginning of the month of October, and the hour of eight in the evening, that four travellers were, by a violent shower of rain, driven for shelter into a little public-house on the side of the highway, distinguished by a sign which was said to exhibit the figure of a black lion. The kitchen, in which they assembled, was the only room for entertainment in the house, paved with red bricks, remarkably clean, furnished with three or four Windsor chairs, adorned with shining plates of pewter, and copper saucepans, nicely scoured, that even dazzled the eyes of the beholder; while a cheerful fire of sea-coal blazed in the chimney.
Download The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves from Project Gutenberg
or find a paper copy
Other books by Tobias George:
- The Adventures Of Peregrine Pickle
- The Expedition Of Humphry Clinker
- Travels through France and Italy
- The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom