• Source: Travels Through France and Italy

Travels Through France and Italy is a work of travel literature by Tobias Smollett, published in 1766. Smollett used the opportunity to deride the social norms of the Kingdom of France and the Italian states, and to voice his Anti-Catholicism. The book inspired a reply in the novel A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy (1768) by Laurence Sterne, which contained a satirical depiction of Smollett as Smelfungus.




Composition history


In April 1763, the 15-year-old Elizabeth Smollett died. She was the only known child of Tobias Smollett. In June 1763, Tobias left England with his wife. The couple travelled across the Kingdom of France to Nice. In the autumn of 1764, Smollett visited Genoa, Rome, Florence and other towns of the Italian Peninsula. After staying in Nice for the winter, Smollett returned to London by June 1765. Travels Through France and Italy is his account of this journey.




Contents


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, then a small village, as a health resort, and the possibilities of the Corniche road.
The writing is often characterized by spleen, acerbity and quarrelsomeness. Smollett quarrels with innkeepers, postilions and fellow travellers, and holds many (though by no means all) foreigners who he meets in contempt. He voices his own Anti-Catholicism, and derides duelling, petty and proud nobility, such domestic arrangements as the cicisbeo (an 'approved' lover of a married woman), and many other French and Italian customs.




Responses to the book and Smollett's attitude


Laurence Sterne, who met Smollett in Italy, satirized Smollett's jaundiced attitude in the character of Smelfungus in A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy, which was written in part as an answer to Smollett's book.




References


This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain: "Travels through France and Italy". II. Fielding and Smollett. Vol. 10. The Age of Johnson. The Cambridge History of English and American Literature (1907–21).




Sources and external links


Travels through France and Italy at Project Gutenberg
Travels through France and Italy, volume XI of The Works of Tobias Smollett, edited by William Ernest Henley, Scribner's sons, 1900. Introduction by Thomas Seccombe. 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.

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