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
Results 1-5 of 34
... original . 2. The efficient ; he that effects or produces any thing . 3. The first writer of any thing ; distinct from the translator or com- piler . 4. A writer in general . A dramatic slippage seems to take place in this series . The ...
... original invention " and that Paradise Lost " is not the great- est of heroick poems , only because it is not the first . " Yet the Dictio- nary refuses to discriminate the work of authors from the work of writers in general . The ...
... original writer , like Virgil , also qualifies as an author , so long as readers will acknowledge that he is deserving . In this respect , the name of author makes public the sense of writing as a performance or competition , which only ...
... original or exceptional or uni- fied . Even by his own standards , a dictionary seems a drudging sort of work to make an author's name , and the best of his poems were , as he called them , " imitations . " No previous author , or at ...
... original survives , nor was it published at the time . Yet it quickly be- came the talk of the town , and people have never stopped talking about it . Years later , Johnson dictated versions to Giuseppe Baretti and James Boswell . This ...
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 |