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Tobias George Smollett (1721-1771), Scottish novelist, was born in



Dalquhurn, Dumbarton County Scotland. Smollett was born beneath a plane



tree at Dalquharn House on the family estate of Bon hill in the Vale of Leven,



near the village of Renton, Dumbartonshire. At fourteen Smollett was



apprenticed to a Glasgow doctor. He studied medicine at Glasgow



University and moved to London in 1740. He was a ship's surgeon in the



Carragena expedition against the Spanish in the West Indies, and lived in



Jamaica until 1744 when he returned to London and renewed his earlier



attempts to stage a play he had written The Regicide, but still met with no



success. He also failed to set up his own medical practice.



His first novel, the partly autobiographical Roderick Random



(1748), was an immediate success. His best novel, The Expedition of



Humphry Clinker (1771), has become a classic. It is a story, told in a series



of letters, about the travels of a family through England and Scotland.



Smollett was troubled by lack of money. He spent his last years in poor



health, and died in Livorno, Italy, on October 21, 1771. Two years



later, Johnson and Boswell stayed at Cameron House with Smollett's cousin



James, who was preparing to erect a Tuscan column in Smollett's memory at



Renton. Johnson helped compose the Latin obituary on the plinth, and the



column stood in what subsequently became the playground of a school.



Some of Tobias Smollett's work consists of The...