Smollett was a ship’s surgeon before he was a novelist, and his three novels here are all voyages: a young man’s picaresque, a con man’s progress, and a family tour of Britain told entirely in letters.
The order below is publication order. Roderick Random came first in 1748, Ferdinand Count Fathom in 1753, and Humphry Clinker in 1771, the year he died.
Word counts are for the editions here. None is short, but Humphry Clinker is the lightest of the three and the one most readers finish.
The three also show the novel changing shape inside one career: Roderick Random borrows from earlier travel books, Fathom is a case study in villainy with almost no plot, and Humphry Clinker drops the narrator altogether and lets the letters do the work.
The counts are 193,646 for Roderick Random, 157,000 for Ferdinand Count Fathom and 145,000 for Humphry Clinker, about eleven, nine and eight hours at the site’s speed. That is three weeks of evenings, and few readers get through all three: Smollett is a writer people admire in passages and abandon in chapters, which is why the order here is meant to be a way of choosing rather than a course.
Where to start
The Expedition of Humphry Clinker — His last and funniest book: an epistolary tour in which five letter-writers describe the same journey and disagree about everything, including each other.
Tobias Smollett in publication order
Numbered by the date on each book page. Word counts and reading times are for the text on this site.
| # | Year | Title | Form | Words | Reading time | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1748 | The Adventures of Roderick Random | Novel | 193,646 | 11 h | Published in 1748; his first novel. |
| 2 | 1753 | The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom | Novel | 157,000 | 9 h | Published in 1753. |
| 3 | 1771 | The Expedition of Humphry Clinker | Novel | 145,000 | 8 h | Published in 1771, in letters. |
| All three | 495,646 | 28 h |
How to read Tobias Smollett
- Last book first. Humphry Clinker is the comic masterpiece and the easiest entry. Roderick Random and Ferdinand Count Fathom are rougher and longer.
- Two picaresques. Random and Fathom are both road novels with a disreputable hero, and they were written close together. Read them as a pair.
- Letters or narration. Only Humphry Clinker is epistolary. If you like the form, Sterne and Richardson are the neighbours; if not, the first two are straightforward narration.
All three have pages here with chapter summaries, word counts, reading times and free EPUB, AZW3 and KEPUB downloads.
Tobias Smollett’s shelf · Classic fiction · All authors · Books by decade.