Travels Through France Italy Author:Tobias Smollett Dr. Tobias Smollett was one of the most brilliant and idiosyncratic figures of the eighteenth century, and his Travels Through France and Italy has been described as the first travel book in modern literature. It is full of prejudice, grousing, sharp observation, caustic satire; but every page is alive, and as Sir Osbert Sitwell observes in his ... more »Introduction, 'the whole book is written in beautifully clear, lazy, ordered, but subtle English, a style partly the result of nature and partly of many years of effort'.« less