The Life and Adventures of Peter Wilkins

Robert Paltock (1697-1767) was an English novelist and attorney. Born in Westminster, Robert was the son of Thomas Paltock. He became an attorney as a young man and was called to the Bar at Clement's Inn, where he lived until 1759. That year, he moved to Lambeth and married Anna Skinner, with whom he would raise one son. His novel The Life and Adventures of Peter Wilkins (1751) is regarded as a fictional travelogue in the tradition of Robinson Crusoe (1719) and has influenced generations of writers, including Walter Scott, Robert Southey, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Charles Lamb. Despite the novel's success, Paltock's name has been largely forgotten by today's critics and readers. Regardless, The Life and Adventures of Peter Wilkins remains an important early adventure novel that capitalized on the growth of the colonial imagination among readers in England and abroad.