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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... whole . The more one examines these standards , the more they seem to shift . Can it be that the same set of words— for instance , a series of definitions — might be mere writing , if attrib- uted to an anonymous scribe , but deeply ...
... whole . An uneasy consciousness that " Marx " does not stand for particular writings but for a " totality of thought " or mode of discourse is what drove Foucault to ask , " What is an Author ? " In spite of his effort to find other ...
... whole affair " a great event in the history of letters and of print , the scene in which not just Samuel Johnson but the author , after centuries of sub- servience to the aristocracy , declares his democratic independence of patronage ...
... whole career had led him to take pride in an honest day's work of writing . Let coxcombs look down on these chores , so long as ordi- nary readers found their lives a little fuller , a little more easy to en- dure . There was ...
... whole season into the time it takes him to write the poem . The effect seems both self - conscious and willful . It is as if the poet had lost confidence in his verses before he came to the end , and thus slumped into an emblem that ...
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 |