Tobias Smollett travelled through Europe with his wife in 1763-65 in a journey designed to recover his mental and physical health after the death of their daughter. The resulting travel narrative provoked controversy and anger in the eighteenth century, when it was often negatively compared to Laurence Sterne's fictional European travels in A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy. Unlike Sterne's sensitive hero, Smollett is argumentative, acerbic, and often contemptuous of local customs.

In addition to a critical introduction, this edition provides extensive annotation and appendices with material on Smollett's correspondence, the book's reception in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, related travel writing, and Smollett's infamous satirization as "Smelfungus" in Sterne's A Sentimental Journey.