The Adventures of Roderick Random

Smollett’s first novel follows the hot-tempered Scot Roderick Random from a harsh childhood through brutal naval service, love, ruin, and eventual fortune. Picaresque and often savage in its satire, it draws on the author’s own years as a ship’s surgeon to expose the cruelties of eighteenth-century life. It is a vigorous, unsentimental portrait of a young man’s fight to survive.