The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom — Complete

A little about the story

Ferdinand Fathom understands that a convincing appearance can carry a person much further than an honest intention. Taken into a generous household, he learns to turn other people’s kindness, vanity, and desire to his advantage. His progress through European society brings a succession of intrigues in which affection becomes an opportunity and a new acquaintance may be either a useful victim or a dangerous competitor.

Smollett follows this accomplished opportunist with a mixture of comic energy and unease. Gambling rooms, military encounters, precarious journeys, and private schemes reveal a world where respectable manners offer little protection against calculated deceit. Rather than asking readers simply to admire an adventurer’s cleverness, the novel keeps returning to the people who pay for it. Its darker episodes give the familiar wandering-hero story a disturbing edge, while its sharp observations expose how readily social ambition can disguise itself as good breeding.

Things You May Not Know About The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom

• A darker adventurer. Published in 1753, the novel gives its central role to a calculating villain rather than an uncomplicated comic hero.
• Two parts together. This Gutenberg edition contains both parts of the work, rather than an isolated installment of Fathom’s travels.
• A dedication with a purpose. Smollett’s dedication discusses the uses of a morally troubling protagonist, explaining the kind of warning such a figure can provide.
• Continental movement. Vienna and Paris are among the locations in a story that moves well beyond the English society of its later episodes.
• A scholarly introduction. The included introduction is by G. H. Maynadier, an English scholar associated with Harvard University, rather than by Smollett himself.