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The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom

Tobias Smollett

Book Overview: 

You can call me Dr. Fathom. Or Count Fathom. But I'm not who I say I am. And can you blame me? My mother was a soldiers' harlot who pocketed extra loot by wandering through the battlefield stripping the dead and dying of valuables. I don't even know who my father was, except he must have had my handsome looks. People liked looking at me. And people liked how I talked too. Early on, I learned that telling the truth didn't get you the same quick reward as telling them what they wanted to hear, being assiduously charming, dissimulating. In a word, lying. I became good at it. And I became the favorite of a rich Hungarian count who took me in and coaxed his pathetically naïve son to look up to me and learn to be like me. Ha! How I wanted to sell my soul to trade places with Renaldo! I wanted his money. I wanted his beautiful life. I wanted his beautiful wife -- at least for an extra notch on my belt. This is the story of how I went about achieving those things. It was easy, especially at first. Because, to tell the truth, people secretly yearn for tall tales.

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Book Excerpt: 
. . .This intimation she proposed to convey privately into the hand of her lover, during his next visit to the family; but both were so narrowly eyed by the mother, that she found the execution of her design impracticable; and next forenoon, on pretence of going to church, repaired to the house of a companion, who, being also her confidant, undertook to deliver the billet with her own hand.

The she-dragon employed by her mother, in obedience to the sign which was displayed from the window immediately put on her veil, and followed Wilhelmina at a distance, until she saw her fairly housed. She would not even then return from her excursion, but hovered about in sight of the door, with a view of making further observations. In less than five minutes after the young lady disappeared, the scout perceived her coming out, accompanied by her comrade, from whom she instantly parted, and bent her way towards the church in go. . . Read More

Community Reviews

‘Ferdinand Count Fathom’ was the first book in which Smollett relied on invention rather than experience. The upside of this is that he creates a series of incidents which intriguingly prefigure the Gothic style of a later era; the downside is that the book is simply not very good, despite a strong

It's not bad. It does feel like Smollett is getting paid by the chapter though. Similar to how Dickens goes 25% longer than necessary, Smollett is more like 33% over in this one. Part "Canterbury Tales", part Shakespearian comedy, part "Dangerous Liaisons", part "Othello", part "Flashman", Smollett

This was a hard one to get through but I really enjoyed it a lot and it's such an interesting and often funny portrait of 18 the century life.
It's definitely a very uneven book though in the sense that the first half fairly zips along with incident as Count Fathom cheats, swindles and seduces person

A series of adventures following the anti-hero Fathom. A rake and scoundrel in the 18th century.

The hero or antihero, as some harsh readers might say in our current cynical society, of the story of Count Fathom; travels with his mother an angel of mercy and camp follower (a dubious name). She kindly puts wounded soldiers out of their misery, with a sharp knife (don't call it murder!), and pick