The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves

Tobias Smollett's least celebrated novel is also his most audacious. The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves takes the faded romance of medieval chivalry and subjects it to the battering wit that made Smollett England's most irreverent novelist. Sir Launcelot, a young man of generous impulses and comic self-delusion, donates armor and sets forth as a knight-errant in an age that has no use for such things. His quest becomes a vehicle for Smollett's savage survey of English society: the Inns of Court, the countryside's squirearchy, and the roads teeming with rogues and ruffians all come under his lacerating gaze. The novel opens with four travelers sheltering from a storm, their banter establishing the earthy, argumentative tone that would define the English comic novel for generations. This was also the first illustrated serial novel in English, its engravings by Anthony Walker giving visual life to Greaves's quixotic circuit of the nation. It lacks the raw energy of Roderick Random or the tender comedy of Humphry Clinker, but Greaves burns with a strange, modern mania all its own.