From July 1741 to March 1744, Samuel Johnson composed speeches based on the actual debates in Parliament for publication in the "Gentleman's Magazine". Because it was then illegal to print any account of parliamentary activities, the magazine published Johnson's contributions as the rather thinly di[...]
Published 1788, an intimate two-volume glimpse into the lives of two of the most colourful literary figures of their age.[...]
Published 1788, an intimate two-volume glimpse into the lives of two of the most colourful literary figures of their age.[...]
The classic view of eighteenth-century life and thought in England through the conversations of the famous writer[...]
In Boswell's "Life of Samuel Johnson", one of the towering figures of English literature is revealed with unparalleled immediacy and originality, in a biography to which we owe much of our knowledge of the man himself. Through a series of richly detailed anecdotes, Johnson emerges as a sociable figu[...]
In his moving essay, Samuel Johnson offers wise words on confronting grief at the loss of a loved one. The other pieces here, ranging from art to marriage to morality, demonstrate the brilliance, perception and wit that made Johnson the leading man of letters of his day, and one of the finest essayi[...]
"Samuel Johnson's Dictionary", published in 1755, marked a milestone in a language in desperate need of standards. No English dictionary before it had devoted so much space to everyday words, been so thorough in its definitions, or illustrated usage by quoting from Shakespeare and other great writer[...]
'If a man is to write A Panegyrick, he may keep vices out of sight; but if he professes to write A Life, he must represent it really as it was.' In the last of his major writings, Samuel Johnson looked back over the previous two centuries of English Literature in order to describe the personalities[...]
'What then is to be done? said Rasselas; the more we inquire, the less we can resolve.' Rasselas and his companions escape the pleasures of the 'happy valley' in order to make their 'choice of life'. By witnessing the misfortunes and miseries of others they may come to understand the nature of happ[...]
This authoritative edition was formerly published in the acclaimed Oxford Authors series under the general editorship of Frank Kermode. It brings together a unique combination of Johnson's poetry and prose - all the major poems, complemented by essays, criticism, and fiction - to give the essence of[...]
The next volume in the distinguished Yale Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson comprises prefaces, proposals, dedications, appeals, and other works that Johnson wrote for friends and acquaintances. The English critic, biographer, and poet Samuel Johnson was among the most influential figures of th[...]
In the spirit of her blockbuster #1 "New York Times" bestseller "The Happiness Project, " Gretchen Rubin embarks on a new project to make home a happier place.
One Sunday afternoon, as she unloaded the dishwasher, Gretchen Rubin felt hit by a wave of homesickness. Homesick--why? She was standing[...]
The author of Almost No Memory presents an inventive collection of short fiction that explores the various ways in which human beings perceive each other and themselves, from a couple that suspects their friends think them boring to a funeral home that receives a letter rebuking it for linguistic er[...]
Samuel Johnson has become known to posterity in two capacities: through his own works as the great literary essayist of the eighteenth century, and, through Boswell's Life, as a man - notoriously a medical patient with a string of physical and psychological ailments. John Wiltshire brings the two to[...]
Johnson, born weak and half-blind, shambolic and poverty-stricken, became the most admired and quoted man in the eighteenth century. Thrown out of Oxford for a lack of funds, he rose to celebrity: author of "The Dictionary", a friend to the king, companion of Reynolds, Goldsmith and Garrick. David N[...]
Bewigged, muscular and for his day unusually tall, adorned in soiled, rumpled clothes, beset by involuntary tics, opinionated, powered in his conversation by a prodigious memory and intellect, Samuel Johnson (1709 1784) was in his life a literary and social icon as no other age has produced. Johnson[...]
The most celebrated English biography is a group portrait in which extraordinary man paints the picture of a dozen more. At the centre of a brilliant circle which included Burke, Reynolds, Garrick, Fanny Burney and even George III, Boswell captures the powerful, troubled and witty figure of Samuel J[...]
Since the first appearance of Samuel Johnson's edition of Shakespeare's drama in 1765, its Preface has often been published separately, while the Notes have been treated as miscellaneous and fragmentary. As a result, few modern readers realize that the Notes in fact contain coherent interpretations [...]