The Life of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 1 (Classic Reprint) - Couverture souple

Fowler, Thomas

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 1440033900 ISBN 13 : 9781440033902

Editeur : Forgotten Books, 2018

Synopsis

Discover the prisms of a literary friendship and a life well lived.

This volume gathers James Boswell’s nuanced portrait of Samuel Johnson, blending biography with the texture of 18th‑century letters, diary entries, and Johnson’s own writings. The result is a window into a pivotal literary era and the big ideas that shaped it.

In these pages, you’ll find:

• A richly drawn portrait of Johnson’s character, wit, and intellect
• An illuminated look at Boswell’s conversations, travels, and daily life
• Drafts, notes, and letters that reveal the era’s culture, humor, and debates
• A sense of how a great thinker influenced literature, society, and friendship

Ideal for readers who enjoy classic biographical storytelling, literary history, and the dynamic between a brilliant writer and his devoted biographer.

A propos du livre

Présentation de l'éditeur

Such was the impulsive, good-humoured remark to which we probably owe the most vivid, entertaining, and enduring piece of biography in the English language. Johnson little knew that he sealed his own fate by this very uncharacteristic reception of a volatile Scottish laird. We are, however, so accustomed to associate the great Doctor with Boswell that we are apt to overlook many other friends who both formed, and expressed, their own impressions of him. Any view of such a man could hardly escape being interesting, however secondary it might seem after Boswell. Sir John Hawkins, Murphy, Kearsley, may all be studied with profit. Mrs. Piozzi and Madame D'Arblay, and extracts from some thirty or forty other writers also make up a considerable collection of Johnsoniana; and while all serve to correct the fallacy that Johnson owed his fame to Boswell's Life, they illustrate and enhance, rather than detract from, Bozzy's unique gifts as a biographer. Johnson's other friends must have met him far more frequently than Boswell did, but they lacked his remarkable curiosity, his carefully trained powers of observation, and his dogged pertinacity. I will revert to Boswell's gifts as a biographer later, but acknowledging his genius for this kind of work, one must admit that in the choice of Johnson as a subject he was singularly happy. Compare, for instance, Johnson's utterances with the recorded table-talk of Dr. Samuel Parr, a man who enjoyed no little reputation in his day for his conversational powers, and see how feebly Parr compares with Johnson. It is hardly possible that Boswell with all his powers could have done much with such a subject as pompous old Dr. Parr, or even with Johnson's greater contemporaries Burke, for instance, or Reynolds, or Gibbon. What other public character of the time could have survived the ordeal as Johnson has? Who would have combined so

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Forgotten Books
• Date d'édition: 2018
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 1440033900
• ISBN 13: 9781440033902
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 504
• Coordonnées du fabricant: Copytech (UK) Ltd, Trading as Printondemand-worldwide.com; gpsr@podww.com; ; 9 Culley Court; Orton Southgate; Peterborough; Cambridgeshire; PE2 6WA; Royaume-Uni
• Personne responsable: Easy Access System Europe Oü, 16879218; +358405003575; gpsr.requests@easproject.com; ; Mustamäe tee 50; Tallinn; 10621; Estonie