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The Lives of the Poets
A Selection
Samuel Johnson
Edited by Roger Lonsdale and John Mullan
560 pages
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196x129mm
978-0-19-922674-0
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Paperback
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28 May 2009
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- A unique selection from Johnson's Lives of the Poets, drawn from Roger Lonsdale's acclaimed complete edition, and with an engaging Introduction and Notes by John Mullan.
- Selects ten complete Lives of the most important poets and is the only one-volume paperback edition to make available Johnson's most substantial Lives in unabridged form.
- Substantial Introduction sets the Lives in the context of Johnson's life, explains how he used them to anatomize the 'life of writing', how he was influenced by his sense of literature as a national property, and celebrates their literary qualities.
- Notes are designed for the general reader as well as the student; they explain eighteenth-century meanings, gloss allusions, and identify Johnson's sources (and errors).
- Up-to-date bibliography.
'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 as well as the achievements of the leading English poets. The major Lives - of Milton, Dryden, Swift, and Pope - are memorable cameos of the life of writing in which Johnson is as attentive to human frailty as to literary prowess. The shorter Lives preserve some of Johnson's most piercing, critical judgements. Unsentimental, opinionated, and quotable, The Lives of the
Poets continues to influence the reputations of the writers concerned. It is one of the greatest works of English criticism, but also one of the most humanly diverting.
This selection of the Lives of ten of the most important poets draws its text from Roger Lonsdale's authoritative complete edition.Readership: Readers of biography, especially literary biography, and Samuel Johnson; students of eighteenth-century literature, history of criticism
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Samuel Johnson Edited by Roger Lonsdale, Emeritus Fellow, Balliol College, University of Oxford, and John Mullan, Professor of English, University College London
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"It's fascinating...a mightily entertaining survey of literature and literati." - Sunday Telegraph "The 'Lives of the Poets', combining mournfully droll biography with brilliant literary criticism, is as enjoyable as anything he wrote." - John Mullan, Saturday Guardian
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Cowley
Milton
Rochester
Dryden
Congreve
Gay
Savage
Swift
Pope
Gray
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The specification in this catalogue, including without limitation price, format, extent, number of illustrations, and month of publication, was as accurate as possible at the time the catalogue was compiled. Occasionally, due to the nature of some contractual restrictions, we are unable to ship a specific product to a particular territory. Jacket images are provisional and liable to change before publication.
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