SOURCE: "The Representation of the Real," in his The Novels of Tobias Smollett, translated by Antonia White in collaboration with the author, Longman, 1976, pp. 255-301.

In the following excerpt from a translation of Boucé's book, originally published in French in 1971, Boucé focuses closely on Roderick Random to prove his assertion that Smollett did in fact make use of the "real" or "truthfulness" as he saw it to expose the wrongs of eighteenth-century life and that "realism" is a modern term by which Smollett's works have been unfairly criticized.

Right from the beginning of his literary career, Smollett was aware of the problems posed by the representation of the real in the novel. His preface to Roderick Random expresses in very clear terms this prime concern of the author confronted with the choice between a fantastic and fictitious version of life and, at the opposite extreme, a deliberate...