Book Description: To describe Dr Tobias Smollett as the world's champion bad traveller would be unfair to those thousands of tourists whose peevish progress across the world has gone unsung. Those bathroom-grumblers, those bill-scrutinisers, those tip-begrudgers, those holiday chauvinists, whose complaints and suspicions have varied so little, and have been so consistently sustained since the first years of popular travel. Of this familiar company, however, Smollett is something of a Laureate, and "Travels Through France and Italy" was known from the outset as a notably ill-tempered travel book. The outcome of his two years' sojourn abroad, following on the death of his 15-year-old daughter, Smollett's book is marked by a bite and insight which make it a useful accompaniment to the novels for which he is so well known.