Tobias Smollett
50 episodes listed below
Letters, rank, romance, and dry calamity.
Expedition of Humphry Clinker is a serialized LibriVox reading of Tobias Smollett’s epistolary fiction. Its recent sections follow marriages, household accounts, country-house arrangements, river accidents, and anxious letters in a deliberately antique comic mode.
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Expedition of Humphry Clinker is a serialized reading of Tobias Smollett’s comic epistolary fiction, presented through public-domain LibriVox recordings. It is not a talk show. It is a procession of letters, each one carrying its own anxieties, vanities, grudges, affections, and social measurements. Recent episodes gather around a family comedy nearing its close. Lydia Melford writes in trembling anticipation after discovering that Wilson is George Denison, with marriage no longer opposed and happiness made almost suspicious by its sudden arrival. J Melford reports the same gathering with cooler narrative order, adding Mr. Baynard, Miss Willis, George Denison, and the preparations for the nuptials. Matt Bramble attends to friendship, recovery, farm management, and the future placement of Lismahago and Matthew Lloyd. Win Jenkins supplies the broadest comedy, turning a river accident, lost clothing, wounded pride, romantic uncertainty, and household promotion into an exuberant catalogue of calamities. Tab Lismahago’s letter brings the domestic ledger back into view, with accounts to inspect, servants to manage, rooms to prepare, and married economy newly asserted. The show’s recurring charm lies in that contrast. Great emotions arrive wrapped in practical instructions. A life may change, but someone must still warm the room, settle the stewardship, send the chaise, and keep the proper distance among servants. The narration rewards patience with social texture: names, houses, journeys, kinship, rank, embarrassment, and the small moral judgments hidden in ordinary arrangements. Its humor is dry rather than brisk. Its drama is formal rather than explosive. Listeners also encounter occasional modern advertisements before or after the literary sections, sometimes abruptly at odds with the period voice. Beneath those interruptions, the show remains a slow, ornate comic engine built from correspondence, self-exposure, and the endless business of living among other people.
Made for: For listeners who like classic fiction, public-domain audiobooks, epistolary storytelling, and comic social observation delivered at an unhurried pace.
What sets it apart: Its appeal comes from the letter-by-letter structure: the same family upheavals are filtered through anxious lovers, practical managers, comic servants, and observers rather than a single narrator.
Dive into The Expedition of Humphry Clinker, the final picaresque masterpiece by Tobias Smollett, often hailed as his most humorous and brilliant work. First published in London on June 17, 1771, this epistolary novel unfolds through a series of letters penned by six distinct characters the cantankerous Welsh Squire Matthew Bramble, his spirited sister Tabitha, their charming niece and nephew Jery and Lydia Melford, Tabithas witty maid Winifred Jenkins, and Lydias earnest suitor Wilson. The humor shines as each character presents wildly different accounts of the same events, revealing their unique perspectives and quirks. Set against the backdrop of the vibrant high-society...
Based on 5 episodes we listened to · September 2026
A section-by-section classic reading whose letters turn travel, manners, literary vanity, and household friction into sharply observed comic fiction.
Expedition of Humphry Clinker lets Tobias Smollett's novel unfold section by section, with letters carrying the action and each writer's temperament shaping what comes into view.
A waxed floor turns a polite visit into a slide; your taste for social embarrassment has found company.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A rescue turns into a dispute over gratitude, duty, and what recompense should mean.
A rescue in a market town turns into a quiet argument over what a saved life is worth and who gets to put a price on it. The scene stays close to exchange: the servant refuses the money, the squire answers with gratitude of his own, and Lismahago presses for a yearly settlement…
A false alarm becomes a dry social test of laughter, objection, and bruised pride.
This passage treats a false alarm less like a gag and more like a small social audit. It watches who laughs, who pushes back, and who ends up carrying the awkwardness after the joke has already landed. Mr.
A country visit becomes a cool, funny study of social polish, discomfort, and family strain.
Matt Bramble's visit to Baynard turns a polite call into a sharp look at a grand house that feels expensive, cramped, and faintly absurd. The servants are powdered, the rooms are too fine to live in, the host is ill enough to be alarming, and the son in hussar dress brings just…
A Highland travel letter that makes custom, appetite, and rank feel closely, quietly observed.
A letter from Inverary turns the northern road into a careful ledger of climate, custom, and rank as J. Melford looks toward the Hebrides and takes in the West Highlands piece by piece.
A dinner of authors becomes a precise satire of vanity, commerce, and literary survival.
Section 39 reads as a sharp satire of literary vanity and social caution. The dinner party suggests a room full of people who know one another too well to relax, and J. Melford's uncle cuts through the mood with a dry maxim about the gap between writing well and speaking well.
Sports talk with a skeptical fuse.
Mets anxiety, argued with receipts.
Late-night maps of the unexplained.
This is a LibriVox recording of Section 85 from Tobias Smollett's novel 'The Expedition of Humphrey Klinker', featuring a letter to Mrs.
A letter from a character in Tobias Smollett's novel 'The Expedition of Humphrey Clinker' instructing Mrs.
This episode is a reading of a letter from the novel 'The Expedition of Humphrey Clinker' where the narrator updates Dr.
This episode is a letter from the narrator to Sir Watkin Phillips, recounting recent events including the arrival of friends like Mr.
Matthew Bramble tells Dr.
Tobias Smollett's Letter 76, read by Deborah Lynn for LibriVox, has Mr.
The party reaches a market town and is glad to find an inn that, though set off the post-road, offers very good lodging.
J.
Matt Bramble writes to Dick from the road.
In Section 64 of Tobias Smollett’s The Expedition of Humphry Clinker, J.
J.
This episode features advertisements for Rakuten's cash back shopping rewards and BetMGM Casino's Price is Right Fortune Pick games, with a reminder to gamble responsibly.
This is a public domain audiobook recording of Section 48 from Tobias Smollett's 'The Expedition of Humphrey Klinker', featuring a letter to Dr.
This episode features advertisements for TaxFix accounting services and Ben & Jerry's ice cream sandwiches, followed by a public domain audiobook reading of a letter from The Expedition of Humphrey Klinker.
J.
This episode features a reading of a letter from Humphrey Klinker to Sir Watkin Phillips, describing a visit to the Duke of Enns-le-Vey and the social dynamics of paying homage to a figure who retains influence despite diminished official power.