Samuel JohnsonHarvard University Press, 1998 - 372 pages He was a servant to the public, a writer for hire. He was a hero, an author adding to the glory of his nation. But can a writer be both hack and hero? The career of Samuel Johnson, recounted here by Lawrence Lipking, proves that the two can be one. And it further proves, in its enduring interest for readers, that academic fashions today may be a bit hasty in pronouncing the "death of the author." |
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... Perhaps his reservations and self - effacement conformed to what the age demanded . Perhaps they even represent a deliberate strategy for dealing with the problems of authorship in his time . No career offers a better test case of the ...
... perhaps as rapidly as in any decade of English history.30 Eventually the experimentation would be sorted out , especially when readers took to what Johnson called " the modern form of romances , " or nov- els . But in the meantime poets ...
... perhaps at the cost of a few qualms about whether that club would accept us . Reading The Rambler , each of us feels more able to see through the veneer of society , perhaps at the cost of misgivings about our own goodwill . At any rate ...
Contents
the Western Islands of Scotland | 234 |
The Lives of the English Poets | 259 |
Johnsons Endings | 295 |
Copyright | |
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