Shedding new light on a misunderstood master, this study situates Tobias
Smollett (1721-1771) as a key witness to the birth of the modern
commercial art market. Focusing on the aesthetic issues of taste,
luxury, commercialism, as well as aesthetics itself, William L. Gibson
examines Smollett's histories and non-fiction writing as well as his
novels to open a panorama on the eighteenth-century art world. Art and
Money in the Writings of Tobias Smollett demonstrates how Smollett's
articles on fine art for the Critical Review (1756-63) straddle the
fence between advertisements and art criticism, and create snapshots of
the role periodical publishing played in fostering the commercial art
market. Chapters on Peregrine Pickle (1751, revised 1758), Travels
Through France and Italy (1766), and The Expedition of Humphrey Clinker
(1771) explore Smollett's perspective on the burgeoning art market of
the period, the social aspect of art appreciation, and the role of
fashionable architecture. Smollett's articles from the Critical Review,
never before collated and printed in a scholarly work, are collected in
an annotated appendix, while the lavish illustrations to his Complete
History of England (1755-58), and its Continuation (1760-65), which
underlines the writer's complicity in the for-profit art world of the
time, are examined in a second appendix. The Tobias Smollett that
emerges in this study is a far cry from the blustering Smelfungus
portrayed by his fellow novelist Lawrence Sterne. Instead, he is
discovered to be sensitive to the major aesthetic issues of his day, and
instrumental in the birth of the public art market. Lucidly written and
thoroughly researched, Art and Money in the Writings of Tobias Smollett
will be of interest to people in literary history and criticism, art
history, and social history - whether as scholars, students, or
generally educated readers.
