Tobias Smollett's fourth novel,
Sir Launcelot Greaves, is a contemporary take on what was, for the eighteenth century, the single most influential work of European fiction,
Don Quixote(1605-15). The knight of Smollett's title is a Yorkshire country gentleman - importantly a baronet, rather than a nobleman - son of the landowner, Sir Everhard.
Sir Launcelot Greavesopens with a strikingly successful opening chapter, in which a number of the novel's characters are driven together by a storm at an inn on the Great North Road. They include the merchant-navy man, Capt Crowe – whose nautical language recalls both
Roderick Random's Tom Bowling and
Peregrine Pickle's Commodore Trunnion his nephew, the lawyer Tom Clarke, Fillet the country doctor, and the perverse, misanthropic Ferret, along…
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Citation: Ross, Ian Campbell. "The Life and Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 28 September 2004 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=363, accessed 26 November 2024.]
