This panel will examine why Tobias Smollett has remained a fairly marginal figure in critical discourse, despite his influence and popularity during the period and his engagement with a range of topics (print culture, historiography, the rise of the novel, etc.) that are central to our understanding of eighteenth-century literature and culture. How would our sense of literary history change if we shone our critical spotlight on Smollett instead (or alongside) of those contemporaries who have received more scholarly attention? I envision a roundtable format, with a panel of 4-5 speakers, each given a maximum of 10 minutes to address this question. Please send proposals to lkahan@iusb.edu by September 15, 2010.