The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom
by Tobias Smollett
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The first novel by a major English writer that is devoted to a thoroughgoing portrait of villainy, The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom chronicles the life of an aberrant criminal character. Filled with striking satiric thrusts at the legal, medical, and military establishments of mid-eighteenth-century Europe and England, the novel reveals Tobias Smollett's capacities as a commentator on contemporary life. First published in 1753, Ferdinand Count Fathom is an experimental work that show more explores the relations between history and fiction and introduces, for the first time in the English novel, episodes of Gothic melodrama. Too long neglected and never before available in a carefully prepared scholarly edition, Ferdinand Count Fathom may now be read, understood, and appreciated against the literary and historical background of the eighteenth-century world. show lessTags
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Member Reviews
Probably Smollett's most enjoyable novel. Has a satirical portrait of John Hutchinson?
> Babelio : https://www.babelio.com/livres/Smollett-La-Carriere-dun-vaurien/385417
> On (re)découvre ici le pendant littéraire des peintures de son contemporain Hogarth, où l'immoralité et le manque de scrupules sont les traits principaux d'un roué plus vrai que nature. La biographie, brillamment contée, de Ferdiand, pseudo comte Fathom nous fais même oublier les situations souvent sordides dans lesquelles sont plongées les victimes de ce vil personnage qui n'a rien à envier aux vauriens du XXe siècle.
—Danieljean (Babelio)
> On (re)découvre ici le pendant littéraire des peintures de son contemporain Hogarth, où l'immoralité et le manque de scrupules sont les traits principaux d'un roué plus vrai que nature. La biographie, brillamment contée, de Ferdiand, pseudo comte Fathom nous fais même oublier les situations souvent sordides dans lesquelles sont plongées les victimes de ce vil personnage qui n'a rien à envier aux vauriens du XXe siècle.
—Danieljean (Babelio)
Feb 19, 2021 (Edited)French
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Author Information
139+ Works 3,946 Members
Smollett, the only major eighteenth-century English novelist whose work can seriously be called picaresque, came to the writing of novels with a strong sense of Scottish national pride (an alienating element in the London of the 1750s and 1760s), a Tory feeling for a lost order, horrifying experiences as a physician, and a fierce determination to show more make his way in the literary world. Prolific in a variety of literary forms, he was particularly successful as a popular historian, magazine editor, translator of Cervantes (see Vol. 2), and author of novels about adventurous, unscrupulous, poor young men. His work is marked by vigorous journalistic descriptions of contemporary horrors, such as shipboard amputations or the filthy curative waters of Bath; by a flair for racy narrative often built on violence and sentiment, and for comedy that often relies on practical jokes and puns; and by a great gift for creating comic caricatures. His peppery Travels through France and Italy (1766) was something of a spur to Laurence Sterne's Sentimental Journey, in which Smollett is referred to as Dr. Smelfungus, who "set out with the spleen and jaundice, and every object he passed by was discolored or distorted---He wrote an account of them, but 'twas nothing but the account of his miserable feelings." Smollett's most notable novels are Roderick Random (1748), Peregrine Pickle Pickle (1751), Ferdinand Count Fathom (1753), Sir Launcelot Greaves (1762), which set a precedent by first being serialized in his British Magazine (January 1760--December 1761), and especially The Expedition of Humphrey Clinker (1771), a relatively mellow work that follows the travels of Matthew Bramble, an excitable Welshman, from his home through chaotic England to idyllic Loch Lomond and back. Bramble himself finds what Smollett had irrecoverably lost---his health---as well as a son from his youth. Smollett died in 1771, the year of the novel's appearance, in Leghorn, Italy, and is buried in the English cemetery there. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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- Canonical title
- The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom
- Original publication date
- 1753
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- Members
- 154
- Popularity
- 212,015
- Reviews
- 2
- Rating
- (3.56)
- Languages
- English, French
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 25
- ASINs
- 8
