Samuel Johnson: The Life of an Author

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Harvard University Press, 2009. 7. 1. - 384ÆäÀÌÁö

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."

A book about the life of an author, about how an author is made, not born, Lipking's Samuel Johnson is the story of the man as he lived--and lives--in his work. Tracing Johnson's rocky climb from anonymity to fame, in the course of which he came to stand for both the greatness of English literature and the good sense of the common reader, the book shows how this life transformed the very nature of authorship.

Beginning with the defiant letter to Chesterfield that made Johnson a celebrity, Samuel Johnson offers fresh readings of all the writer's major works, viewed through the lens of two ongoing preoccupations: the urge to do great deeds--and the sense that bold expectations are doomed to disappointment. Johnson steers between the twin perils of ambition and despondency. Mounting a challenge to the emerging industry that glorified and capitalized on Shakespeare, he stresses instead the playwright's power to cure the illusions of everyday life. All Johnson's works reveal his extraordinary sympathy with ordinary people. In his groundbreaking Dictionary, in his poems and essays, and in The Lives of the English Poets, we see Johnson becoming the key figure in the culture of literacy that reaches from his day to our own.

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The Birth of the Author The Letter to Chesterfield
11
First Flowers Johnsons Beginnings
34
Becoming an Author London Life of Savage
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
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13 ÆäÀÌÁö - I had exhausted all the art of pleasing which a retired and uncourtly scholar can possess. I had done all that I could, and no man is well pleased to have his all neglected, be it ever so little.
13 ÆäÀÌÁö - Is not a patron, my lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man struggling for life in the water, and, when he has reached ground, encumbers him with help ? The notice which you have been pleased to take of my labours, had it been early, had been kind; but it has been delayed till I am indifferent, and cannot enjoy it; till I am solitary, and cannot impart it; till I am known, and do not want it. I hope it is no very cynical asperity not to confess obligations where no benefit has been received,...
12 ÆäÀÌÁö - My Lord, I have been lately informed, by the proprietor of The World, that two papers, in which my Dictionary is recommended to the public, were written by your Lordship. To be so distinguished, is an...

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Lawrence Lipking is the Chester D. Tripp Professor of Humanities at Northwestern University.

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