Samuel Johnson: The Life of an AuthorHarvard University Press, 2009 M07 1 - 384 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." |
From inside the book
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... choices of life . Johnson was not born an author . Almost un- known until his forties , he gradually made himself into a writer — and more than a writer , an author — who dominated his age . How this happened , and how it makes his ...
... choice of his own thoughts and words , which a trans- lator has not " ( Dryden ) . At times it does not . The uncertainty extends to another difficult question : just what does an author create ? " Any thing " does not seem very ...
... choice of life ; sometimes the goal veers away just as the runner begins to approach it . The same reason may clarify why issues of authorship can be so interesting . In the making of every au- thor , acts of imagination collide with ...
... choices of quotations to illustrate words , " authour " seems interchangeable with " authority " : " when it happened that any authour gave a definition of a term ... I have placed his authority as a supplement to my own . " 5* The ...
... choice among many possible futures . The signature at the end of the letter wraps up one dream of a career and readies another ; it marks the author's arrival . But to understand what Johnson was going to be , both he and the reader ...
Contents
11 | |
34 | |
48 | |
Preferments Gate The Vanity of Human Wishes | 86 |
Man of Letters A Dictionary of the English Language | 103 |
The Living World The Rambler | 145 |
Reclaiming Imagination Rasselas | 173 |
The Theater of Mind The Plays of William Shakespeare | 198 |
Journeying Westward Political Writings A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland | 234 |
Touching the Shore The Lives of the English Poets | 259 |
The Life to Come Johnsons Endings | 295 |
Abbreviation | 307 |
Notes | 309 |
Index | 363 |