• Title: The Miscellaneous Works of Tobias Smollet, Volume 6
• Author: Tobias Smollet
• Publisher: Derby and Jackson
• Estimated year of printing: 1857 

Notes:

Tobias Smollet (1721 – 1771) was a Scottish novelist, surgeon, and playwright.  He was best known for his picaresquenovels — a forgotten genre of realistic fiction that depicts the adventures of a rogue but appealing hero of low social class who lives by his wits in a corrupt society.  Smollet’s first novel was The Adventures of Roderick Random in 1748, partially based on Smollet’s own life experience as a navy-surgeon’s mate in the Royal Navy in the 1740s.  Smollet’s writing went on to influence future novelists, including Charles Dickens.

This particular book is a nicely bound edition, with extensive use of marbling — the binding, endpapers, and even the paper edges are all marbled.  This volume contains two of Smollet’s novels — Sir Launcelot Greaves and The History and Adventures of an Atom.

Sir Lancelot Greaves is Smollet’s shortest novel, and was first published between 1760 and 1761 as a serial in The British Magazine.  In fact, it was the first English novel specially written to be serialized.  

The History and Adventures of an Atom, first published in 1769,is a more historically interesting book.  It is written in the then-popular “it-narrative” style, where the story is told from the point of view of an object that is passed around between different owners.  This particular story is from the point of view of an atom in the body of a London haberdasher that describes events it witnessed in Japan, which are in fact satirical allegories for British politics during the Seven Year’s War and commentary on Britain’s growing problems with its American colonies.  

The publisher, Derby and Jackson, was founded in 1853 by James C. Derby and Edwin Jackson.  It was initially a very prolific publishing house, mostly focusing on reprinting 18th and 19th century English works, such as this book, which could be published royalty-free since no international copyright law existed yet.  Still, the company only lasted 8 years, failing in 1861 during the first year of the Civil War.

Historical context:

When this book was published in 1857, James Buchanan was President of the United States.  This was the year of Dred Scott v. Sandford decision which ruled that slaves were not American citizens and so did not enjoy the rights and privileges of being a citizen — generally regarded as one of the worst Supreme Court decisions due to its overt racism and lack of proper legal reasoning.  The Panic of 1857 was the first financial panic to spread rapidly throughout the United States, due to the invention of the telegraph.  The American Civil War would start a few years later in 1861.