1935. Complete in One Volume. Smollett was a man of letters in the fullest sense. Trained as a physician, he was not only a novelist but also a playwright, poet, journalist, historian, travel writer, critic, translator, and editor. A foreign excursion inspired The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle; an example of the picaresque novel, it was the first of many rather extreme and libelous tracts by Smollet.