"The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves" by T. Smollett. Published by Good Press. Good Press publishes a wide range of titles that encompasses every genre. From well-known classics & literary fiction and non-fiction to forgotten−or yet undiscovered gems−of world literature, we issue the books that need to be read. Each Good Press edition has been meticulously edited and formatted to boost readability for all e-readers and devices. Our goal is to produce eBooks that are user-friendly and accessible to everyone in a high-quality digital format.
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T. Smollett. The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves
The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves
Table of Contents
DETAILED CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
THE ADVENTURES OF SIR LAUNCELOT GREAVES
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
WHICH THE READER, ON PERUSAL, MAY WISH WERE CHAPTER THE LAST
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
IN WHICH THIS RECAPITULATION DRAWS TO A CLOSE
CHAPTER SIX
IN WHICH THE READER WILL PERCEIVE THAT IN SOME CASES MADNESS IS CATCHING
CHAPTER SEVEN
IN WHICH THE KNIGHT RESUMES HIS IMPORTANCE
CHAPTER EIGHT
WHICH IS WITHIN A HAIR’S-BREADTH OF PROVING HIGHLY INTERESTING
CHAPTER NINE
WHICH MAY SERVE TO SHOW, THAT TRUE PATRIOTISM IS OF NO PARTY
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
DESCRIPTION OF A MODERN MAGISTRATE
CHAPTER TWELVE
WHICH SHOWS THERE ARE MORE WAYS TO KILL A DOG THAN HANGING
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
IN WHICH OUR KNIGHT IS TANTALISED WITH A TRANSIENT GLIMPSE OF FELICITY
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
WHICH SHOWS THAT A MAN CANNOT ALWAYS SIP, WHEN THE CUP IS AT HIS LIP
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CONTAINING ADVENTURES OF CHIVALRY EQUALLY NEW AND SURPRISING
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
IN WHICH THE RAYS OF CHIVALRY SHINE WITH RENOVATED LUSTRE
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CONTAINING THE ACHIEVEMENTS OF THE KNIGHTS OF THE GRIFFIN AND CRESCENT
CHAPTER TWENTY
IN WHICH OUR HERO DESCENDS INTO THE MANSION OF THE DAMNED
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CONTAINING FURTHER ANECDOTES RELATING TO THE CHILDREN ON WRETCHEDNESS
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
IN WHICH CAPTAIN CROWE IS SUBLIMED INTO THE REGIONS ON ASTROLOGY
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
IN WHICH THE CLOUDS THAT COVER THE CATASTROPHE BEGIN TO DISPERSE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER THE LAST
Отрывок из книги
T. Smollett
Published by Good Press, 2022
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There is little more to say of Sir Launcelot Greaves, except in the way of literary history. The given name of the hero may or may not be significant. It is safe to say that if a Sir Launcelot had appeared in fiction one or two generations earlier, had the fact been recognised (which is not indubitable) that he bore the name of the most celebrated knight of later Arthurian romance, he would have been nothing but a burlesque figure. But in 1760, literary taste was changing. Romanticism in literature had begun to come to the front again, as Smollett had already shown by his romantic leanings in Count Fathom. With it there came interest in the Middle Ages and in the most popular fiction of the Middle Ages, the “greatest of all poetic subjects,” according to Tennyson, the stories of Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, which, for the better part of a century, had been deposed from their old-time place of honour. These stories, however, were as yet so imperfectly known—and only to a few—that the most to be said is that some connection between their reviving popularity and the name of Smollett’s knight-errant hero is not impossible.
Apart from this, Sir Launcelot Greaves is interesting historically as ending Smollett’s comparatively long silence in novel-writing after the publication of Fathom in 1753. His next work was the translation of Don Quixote, which he completed in 1755, and which may first have suggested the idea of an English knight, somewhat after the pattern of the Spanish. Be that as it may, before developing the idea, Smollett busied himself with his Complete History of England, and with the comedy, The Reprisal: or the Tars of Old England, a successful play which at last brought about a reconciliation with his old enemy, Garrick. Two years later, in 1759, as editor of the Critical Review, Smollett was led into a criticism of Admiral Knowles’s conduct that was judged libellous enough to give its author three months in the King’s Bench prison, during which time, it has been conjectured, he began to mature his plans for the English Quixote. The result was that, in 1760 and 1761, Sir Launcelot Greaves came out in various numbers of the British Magazine. Scott has given his authority to the statement that Smollett wrote many of the instalments in great haste, sometimes, during a visit in Berwickshire, dashing off the necessary amount of manuscript in an hour or so just before the departure of the post. If the story is true, it adds its testimony to that of his works to the author’s extraordinarily facile pen. Finally, in 1762, the novel thus hurried off in instalments appeared as a whole. This method of its introduction to the public gives Sir Launcelot Greaves still another claim to interest. It is one of the earliest English novels, indeed the earliest from the pen of a great writer, published in serial form.
