Smollett, Tobias. The Expedition of Humphry Clinker, ed. Thomas R. Preston and O M Brack, Jr. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1990. [The Humphry Clinker volume in the Georgia edition of the works of Smollett is now the standard text.]
Smollett, Tobias. The Expedition of Humphry Clinker, ed. Lewis M. Knapp. London: Oxford University Press, 1966. [This volume in the Oxford English Novels series (which also includes Smollett's other novels) provides a good text, introduction, and notes, at an accessible price.]
Bibliography
Spector, Robert D. Tobias Smollett: A Reference Guide. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1980. [An annotated bibliography organized (like all Hall reference guides) by year of publication (1746 to 1978), Its annotations, though short, are usefully informative. It is indexed, unfortunately, by names but not by topics.]
Critical Studies
Beasley, Jerry C. Tobias Smollett Novelist. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1998. [One of the two major studies of Smollett. Critical chapters on Smollett's five novels. Finds Humphry Clinker in its own (comic) way, as remarkable an achievement in epistolary form as Clarissa. Its satire, mainly articulated by Bramble, resolves into comedy as the characters move beyond their initial isolation. "The novel is almost a Bakhtinian carnival of the crossing, superimposing, and interlinking of generic forms" and interweaves historical references, focusing, through the travel medium, on the present world. It develops through the travelers' movement to self-awareness, health, and emotional balance. Clinker and Lismahago are "triumphs of comic portraiture." Jery is a lynchpin between Bramble's irritations and Lydia's sentiments. The novel reaches its thematic climax in Scotland.]
Boucé, Paul-Gabriel. The Novels of Tobias Smollett, trans. P. G. Boucé and Antonia White. London and New York: Longman, 1976. [The other of the two most important critical books on Smollett. The chapter on Humphry Clinker considers such structural elements as epistolary form, repetition, multiple point of view, the treatment of time and geography, and the searches for health and for mates. The novel is driven by a socio-economic dialectic dominated by Bramble's criticism of urban life, by a psychological dialectic on judgment and prejudice (family, religious, political, and national), and by a moral dialectic on the individual's efforts to transcend society.]
Douglas, Aileen. "'The Frolic May Go Round': Bodies as Signs in Humphry Clinker," In Uneasy Sensations: Smollett and the Body. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995. 162-84. [The epistolary form of Humphry Clinker "offers multiple articulations of the body as sign." Humphry's body is subject to gazes he cannot control; Matthew's diseased body needs a cure, and Matthew identifies illness with women. His view that a cure requires control of female sexuality is corroborated by the behavior of Tabitha and even Lydia. He further identifies women with luxury and corruption, as particularly illustrated by Mrs. Baynard.]
Giddings, Robert. "Matthew Bramble's Bath: Smollett and the West Indian Connection." In Smollett: Author of the First Distinction, ed. Alan Bold. London: Vison; Totowa, NJ: Barnes and Noble, 1982. 47-63. [Provides useful background information about Bath and the West-Indian sugar trade. Concludes that Smollett's treatment of Bath and the West-Indian connection reveals the complex materiality of Humphry Clinker as a literary text.]
Grant, Damian. Tobias Smollett: A Study in Style. Manchester: Manchester University Press,; Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1977. [Organized topically rather than by novel, Grant's study begins with a general view of Smollett's concerns, but goes on to argue that "Smollett writes in a different linguistic tradition from that of his fellow novelists, especially Fielding." Emphasizes the relation of style to character and perception.]
Jack, R. D. S. "Appearance and Reality in Humphry Clinker." In Smollett: Author of the First Distinction, ed. Alan Bold. London: Vison; Totowa, NJ: Barnes and Noble, 1982. 209-27. [There are three levels of distinction between appearance and reality: (1) simple dramatic opposition (as in the cases of "Wilson" and Humphry); (2) hypocrisy and deceit in such characters as Tabitha, Win and their suitors, and in the novel's social satire; (3) the subjective testimonies of the five letter-writers, sometimes contrastive, sometimes supplementary, sometimes unanimous, from which the reader's sense of reality emerges.]
Jacobson, Susan L. 'The Tinsel of the Times': Smollett's Argument against Conspicuous Consumption." Eighteenth-Century Fiction 9.1 (October 1996): 71-88. [Sees Humphry Clinker not as a mellow novel but as a bitter satire against money, middle-class wealth, and its effects in consumerism, waste, and decay, which are likened to disease. London is the center, but the contagion has spread elsewhere. Scotland, in contrast, is healthier, more noble, and less self-interested. The contrasting values are embodied in the Baynard and Dennison families.]
Kelly, Lionel., ed. Tobias Smollett: The Critical Heritage. 1987; rpt. London and New York: Routledge, 1995. [Includes ten early reviews of Humphry Clinker, as well as early comments on a number of aspects of Smollett's writings. The cut-off date is the early 1820s, except for a few paragraphs by Dickens.]
Mayer, Robert. "History, Humphry Clinker, and the Novel." Eighteenth-Century Fiction 4.3 (April 1992): 239-55. [Argues that Humphry Clinker is unified by Smollett's concern for history, specifically the 1707 union of England and Scotland, whereby English material progress can be restrained by Scottish values. It is Smollett's most successful novel because its historical concerns are embodied in the fictional character of Bramble.]
Preston, Thomas R. "Smollett Among the Indians." Philological Quarterly 61.3 (Summer 1982): 231-41. [Provides considerable information on Smollett's sources to show that his narrative incorporates many specific factual details. Lismahago's story seems to combine material from contemporary descriptions of the Miamis and the Iroquois Confederation.]
Prior, Tim. "Lydia Melford and the Role of the Classical Body in Smollett's Humphry Clinker." Studies in the Novel 30.4 (Winter 1998): 489-504. [Argues, not very richly, that Lydia's "classical" (i.e., spiritualized) body and her character "focus themes concerned with the interrelated ideals of simplicity and rural retirement."]
Spector, Robert Donald. Smollett's Women: A Study in an Eighteenth-Century Masculine Sensibility. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1994. 60-80, 144-72. [Smollett's novels are decidedly about men, with women playing a secondary role, in keeping with Smollett's conservative views. But Lydia Melford is a character who develops in the course of the novel and shows more depth than other Smollett heroines. Tabitha, the novel's dominant grotesque woman, is richly comic and fulfills a number of functions in the novel. Her servant Win is more likeable.]
---. Tobias George Smollett, updated edition. Boston: Twayne, 1989. [An introduction to Smollett, concentrating on the five major novels. Argues that Smollett consistently uses picaresque plots, and that this is true even for Humphry Clinker, his epistolary novel, where his satire is broader.]
Weed, David. M. "Sentimental Misogyny and Medicine in Humphry Clinker." Studies in English Literature 37.3 (Summer 1997): 615-36. [Argues that Smollett's sentimental satire is both gendered and nationalistic, finding on the margins of English territories "a model of masculinity based on rational male control of landed economy and polite manly camaraderie rather than commercial passion and effeminate, vain self-interest."]
Zomchick, John P. "Social Class, Character, and Narrative Strategy in Humphry Clinker." Eighteenth-Century Life 10.3 (October 1983): 172-85. [Seeks to reconcile formalist and contextualist approaches by a post-Marxist argument "that Humphry Clinker arrives at a solution to the breakdown of traditional, deferential relations between two social orders by delivering specific suggestions for reform in a powerful wish-fulfillment narrative," in which "the lower order in the form of Clinker-Loyd is reabsorbed into a paternalist Utopia." But despite the theoretical references, the reading is traditional.]