{{Short description|English novelist and attorney}} {{Use dmy dates|date=October 2019}} '''Robert Paltock''' (1697– March 20, 1767) was an English novelist and attorney. His most famous work is ''The Life and Adventures of Peter Wilkins, a Cornish Man'' (1751).<ref name=googlebook> {{cite book |url=https://archive.org/details/lifeandadventur01paltgoog |quote=robert paltock peter wilkins. |title=The Life and Adventures of Peter Wilkins |via=Internet Archive |author=Paltock, Robert |year=1751 | accessdate = 2007-05-03 |publisher=Reeves & Turner}}</ref>

==Biography== The only son of Thomas Paltock of St James's, Westminster, Paltock was born in 1697. He became an attorney and lived for some time in Clement's Inn. He then moved, before 1759, to Back Lane, Lambeth. He married Anna Skinner, through whom his son, also named Robert, inherited a small property at Ryme Intrinseca, Dorset. There Robert Paltock, who died in London on 20 March 1767, was buried.<ref name=eb11>Chisholm, 1911.</ref>

==Work== ''The Life and Adventures of Peter Wilkins'' is somewhat on the same plan as ''Robinson Crusoe'', the special feature being the ''gawry'', or flying woman, whom hero discovered on his island, and married. John W. Cousin, author of ''A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature'', was not impressed by it, saying: :"The description of Nosmnbdsgrutt, [sic] the country of the flying people, is a dull imitation of Swift, and much else in the book is tedious."<ref>Cousin, 1910.</ref>

Paltock's book was admired by Walter Scott, Robert Southey, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Leigh Hunt and Charles Lamb. The book was reprinted several times, notably with an introduction by A. H. Bullen in 1884. It was translated into French (1763) and into German (1767).<ref name=eb11/>

==Notes== {{Reflist}}

== References == * {{SBDEL|wstitle=Paltock, Robert}} * {{EB1911|wstitle=Paltock, Robert}}

==External links== * {{commonscatinline}} * {{Gutenberg author | id=24763| name=Robert Paltock}} * {{Internet Archive author |sname=Robert Paltock}} * {{Librivox author |id=14630}} * {{Cite DNB |last=Goodwin |first=Gordon |wstitle=Paltock, Robert|volume=43|short=x}}

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Paltock, Robert}} Category:1697 births Category:1767 deaths Category:18th-century English male writers Category:18th-century English novelists Category:English male novelists Category:18th-century English lawyers