This is a twelve-volume set of books written by Tobias Smollett and edited by George Saintsbury and published in London by Gibbings and in Philadelphia by J .B. Lippincott between 1900 and 1904. The books are 3/4 bound, with five raised bands, six gilt-ruled compartments with gilt lettering and elaborate gilt tooling on the splines, marbled boards and marbled endpapers, they were bound by Morrell in London and Charles E. Lauriat in Boston, the half-titles have geometric designs to highlight who wrote and edited the works, there are attractive frontispieces protected by tissue guards in each volume, the illustrations were done by Frank Richards, including the title pages, which have images of Pan-like figures with horns coming out of their heads, and the top edges are gilt. The titles are The Adventures of Roderick Random (three volumes), The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle (four volumes), The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves (one volume), The Expedition of Humphrey Clinker (two volumes), and The Adventures of Count Fathom (two volumes), They all have pages of Contents after the title pages, then a List of Illustrations, an Introduction, and the text, and the first volume of a particular title usually has the Introduction and not the other volumes in that set, and Humphrey Clinker does not have any Contents pages in either volume - they are not torn out of the two volumes, but are just not there - they were never included in the two books. Tobias Smollett (1721 - 1771) was a Scottish novelist, surgeon, critic, and playwright, and best known for his picaresque novels such as The Adventures of Roderick Random (1748), The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle (1751) and The Expedition of Humphry Clinker (1771), which influenced later novelists, including Charles Dickens. He was educated at the University of Glasgow, where he studied medicine and eventually qualified as a surgeon, but there are questions about whether he really earned a doctor's degree or not. Smollett's first published work was in 1746, a poem about the Battle of Culloden entitled "The Tears of Scotland". However, it was The Adventures of Roderick Random, a semi-autobiographical story of a "north Britain on the make" which made his name. His poetry was described as "delicate, sweet and murmurs as a stream". The Adventures of Roderick Random was modeled on Le Sage's Gil Blas and despite its scandalous content covering "snobbery, prostitution, debt and hinting at homosexuality", it was published in 1748 Smollett was considered a man of letters and associated with figures like Laurence Sterne, Oliver Goldsmith, and Samuel Johnson, some of whose books are in this auction. Laurence Sterne, in his A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy, refers to Smollett under the nickname Smelfungus, due to the snarling abuse Smollett heaped on the institutions and customs of the countries he visited, yet George Orwell praised him as "Scotland's best novelist". The picaresque novel (Spanish, from pícaro, for "rogue" or "rascal") is a genre of prose fiction depicting the adventures of a roguish but "appealing hero", usually of low social class, who lives by his wits in a corrupt society; these novels typically adopt a realistic style, and there are often some elements of comedy and satire. You can see Smollett's influence on Dickens right here - that describes some of Dickens' novels to a T. The books measure 6 7/8 x 4 1/2 in. wide and are in very good condition, with tight bindings and clean pages, and text, and the frontispieces are in exceptionally good shape, with just a hint of brown spots on a couple. There's tads of rubbing on the spines and at the tips, and two have a slight bow towards the bottom, and a very attractive set of Smollett's works. And one of those odds pieces of trivia - Smollett is an English and Scottish surname originally meaning small head. #57 #1578