Boswell's Presumptuous Task

Boswell's Presumptuous Task
Author :
Publisher : HarperPerennial
Total Pages : 0
Release :
ISBN-10 : 0007234295
ISBN-13 : 9780007234295
Rating : 4/5 (95 Downloads)

Synopsis Boswell's Presumptuous Task by : Adam Sisman

With great wit, Sisman here tells the story of Boswell's presumptuous task--the making of the greatest biography of all time. Sisman traces the friendship between Boswell and Samuel Johnson, his mentor, and provides a fascinating account of Boswell's seven-year struggle to write "The Life of Samuel Johnson."

The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.

The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.
Author :
Publisher :
Total Pages : 438
Release :
ISBN-10 : UCSD:31822043035088
ISBN-13 :
Rating : 4/5 (88 Downloads)

Synopsis The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. by : James Boswell

A Life of James Boswell

A Life of James Boswell
Author :
Publisher : Yale University Press
Total Pages : 644
Release :
ISBN-10 : 0300093128
ISBN-13 : 9780300093124
Rating : 4/5 (28 Downloads)

Synopsis A Life of James Boswell by : Peter Martin

"Born in Edinburgh, the 'Athens of the North', a Scot who hated living in Scotland and nourished a lifelong love affair with London, Boswell was biographer, journalist, laird, advocate, social lion, incurable rake, lover, life of the party, traveller, steadfast friend, endearing charmer, exhibitionist fool, and drunken sot. In this moving biography, Peter Martin assesses Boswell's literary achievements and uncovers the pulsating and dynamic world he thrived in, from the royal courts and the drawing rooms of fashionable ladies and gentlemen to the fleshpots of London's unsavoury underworld and the chambers of the insane. He also poignantly reveals a man in agony, easily misunderstood, relentlessly plagued by hypochondria or melancholia, buffeted like a straw in the wind by a multitude of anxieties and 'horrible imaginings'."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Making Boswell's Life of Johnson

Making Boswell's Life of Johnson
Author :
Publisher : Elements in Eighteenth-Century Connections
Total Pages : 107
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781009271424
ISBN-13 : 1009271423
Rating : 4/5 (24 Downloads)

Synopsis Making Boswell's Life of Johnson by : Richard B. Sher

This Element documents the details and implications of Boswell's risky publication history. It argues that the success of the first edition of the Life of Samuel Johnson was the result not only of Boswell's biographical genius but also of collaboration with a devoted support network.

The 100 Best Nonfiction Books of All Time

The 100 Best Nonfiction Books of All Time
Author :
Publisher :
Total Pages : 0
Release :
ISBN-10 : 1903385830
ISBN-13 : 9781903385838
Rating : 4/5 (30 Downloads)

Synopsis The 100 Best Nonfiction Books of All Time by : Robert McCrum

Beginning in 1611 with the King James Bible and ending in 2014 with Elizabeth Kolbert's 'The Sixth Extinction', this extraordinary voyage through the written treasures of our culture examines universally-acclaimed classics such as Pepys' 'Diaries', Charles Darwin's 'The Origin of Species', Stephen Hawking's 'A Brief History of Time' and a whole host of additional works --

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson
Author :
Publisher : Oldcastle Books Ltd
Total Pages : 543
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781904915508
ISBN-13 : 1904915507
Rating : 4/5 (08 Downloads)

Synopsis Samuel Johnson by : Jeffrey Meyers

Jeffrey Meyers tells the extraordinary story of Samuel Johnson one of the most illustrious figures of English literary tradition. Johnson was famous as a poet, novelist, biographer, essayist, critic, editor, lexicographer, conversationalist and larger than life personality. After nine years of work Johnson's, 'A dictionary of the English Language, was published in 1755. He overcame great adversity to achieve success. 'The Struggle' is a masterful portrait of a brilliant and tormented figure.

The Club

The Club
Author :
Publisher : Yale University Press
Total Pages : 498
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780300244960
ISBN-13 : 0300244967
Rating : 4/5 (60 Downloads)

Synopsis The Club by : Leo Damrosch

Prize-winning biographer Leo Damrosch tells the story of “the Club,” a group of extraordinary writers, artists, and thinkers who gathered weekly at a London tavern In 1763, the painter Joshua Reynolds proposed to his friend Samuel Johnson that they invite a few friends to join them every Friday at the Turk’s Head Tavern in London to dine, drink, and talk until midnight. Eventually the group came to include among its members Edmund Burke, Adam Smith, Edward Gibbon, and James Boswell. It was known simply as “the Club.” In this captivating book, Leo Damrosch brings alive a brilliant, competitive, and eccentric cast of characters. With the friendship of the “odd couple” Samuel Johnson and James Boswell at the heart of his narrative, Damrosch conjures up the precarious, exciting, and often brutal world of late eighteenth-century Britain. This is the story of an extraordinary group of people whose ideas helped to shape their age, and our own.

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson
Author :
Publisher : Hachette UK
Total Pages : 353
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780297856160
ISBN-13 : 0297856162
Rating : 4/5 (60 Downloads)

Synopsis Samuel Johnson by : Peter Martin

The first new biography for a generation of one of the great figures of English literature Poet, essayist, biographer, lexicographer, critic, conversationalist and wit, Dr Johnson is one of the great figures of English literature, perhaps the most quoted English writer after Shakespeare. Our view of Johnson has been overwhelmingly shaped by James Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson, published in 1791, the most famous biography in the English language. But invaluable as Boswell is as a source, he should not be the last word. This new biography illuminates the Johnson that Boswell never knew: the awkward youth, the unsuccessful schoolmaster, the eccentric marriage, his early years in London in the 1740s scratching a living, the epic struggle to produce the Dictionary. Very much the outsider, rather than the supremely confident dispenser of robust common sense. Using material unknown to previous biographers, Peter Martin describes the psychological knife-edge on which Johnson felt he lived, caused by his severe melancholia and his physical diseases. He explores Johnson's role in the publishing and printing world of the time and he reveals how important women were to Johnson throughout his life. The Samuel Johnson that emerges from this enthralling biography is still the foremost figure of his age but a more rebellious, unpredictable and sympathetic figure than the one that Boswell so memorably portrayed.