Although published anonymously, it is clear that this little known picaresque novel of life set mainly in eighteenth century Bath could only have been written by an insider. Francis Fleming was the leader of the Pump Room orchestra and so witnessed the fashionable frolics and frivolities of his audience. The hero is a violinist in Bath, which suggests that the Adventures, Perils and Critical Escapes of Timothy Ginnadrake (which take place in England, Ireland and France) are also those of Fleming. He was originally from Ireland and his business partner was Anne Roland, a French dancing instructor with whom Fleming ran the chicest dancing school in Bath. They travelled to France together each year to learn the latest steps. A scathing contemporary review of Fleming’s novel suggested that he was a poor man’s Henry Fielding, “that consummate biographer in low life”. The reviewer claims that Fleming’s “chief design seems to have been that of making us laugh innocently, at least, if not profitably...if we at all indulge our risibility, it is more on account of the whimsical situations in which we sometimes find his hero than on any other”. (The Critical Review or Annals of Literature, volume 34, 1772). The third volume meets with more approval. This is a history of Bath from 1670, describing how the town was rescued from its position as one of the poorest in England by John Nash of whom Fleming says, “his polite behaviour and goodness of heart soon gained him the esteem of the gentry who resorted to Bath”. It is a slight mystery why Timothy Ginnadrake isn’t better known. Georgian Bath has been a constant source of interest and although one cannot pretend that Fleming is a writer of the first rank, he tells his stories, both factual and fictional, with verve and wit and with more than a nod to the ridiculousness and savagery of fashionable society.