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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... common reader , the book shows how this life transformed the very nature of authorship . Beginning with the defiant letter to Chesterfield that made Johnson a celebri- ty , Samuel Johnson offers fresh readings of all the writer's major ...
... common reader . But he also kept company in his mind with the great authors of Europe , living and dead . The effort to bring such real and imagined readers together shaped all his work . Reconceiv- ing the public for whom he wrote , in ...
... common to human kind . " 14 Thus the biographer weighs each life against the motives and passions that influence every life ; the moralist recognizes enduring patterns of thought and behavior in each new dilemma ; the literary critic ...
... From the authours which rose in the time of Elizabeth , a speech might be formed adequate to all the purposes of use and elegance . " Thus Shake- speare sets the standard for " the diction of common 30 THE BIRTH OF THE AUTHOR.
... common life . " When the Preface to the Dictionary reviews its 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 ...
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 |