The Life of Samuel JohnsonPenguin UK, 30.10.2008 - 1312 Seiten In Boswell’s Life of Samuel Johnson, one of the towering figures of English literature is revealed with unparalleled immediacy and originality. While Johnson’s Dictionary remains a monument of scholarship, and his essays and criticism command continuing respect, we owe our knowledge of the man himself to this biography. Through a series of wonderfully detailed anecdotes, Johnson emerges as a sociable figure with a huge appetite for life, crossing swords with other great eighteenth-century luminaries, from Garrick and Goldsmith to Burney and Burke – even his long-suffering friend and disciple James Boswell. Yet Johnson had a vulnerable, even tragic, side and anxieties and obsessions haunted his private hours. Boswell’s sensitivity and insight into every facet of his subject’s character ultimately make this biography as moving as it is entertaining. |
Im Buch
Ergebnisse 1-5 von 81
... Langton's college acquaintance Topham Beauclerk: Johnson, soon after this acquaintance [with Bennet Langton] began, passed a considerable time at Oxford. He at first thought it strange that Langton should associate so much with one who ...
... Langton – not to Boswell – that the dying Johnson tenderly quoted Tibullus' line 'Te teneam moriens deficiente manu' ('When I expire, let my trembling hand hold yours'): a gesture which is saturated with a sense of strong yet delicate ...
... Langton: He however charged Mr. Langton with what he thought want of judgement upon an interesting occasion. 'When I was ill, (said he) I desired he would tell me sincerely in what he thought my life was faulty. Sir, he brought me a ...
... Langton one day asked him how he had acquired so accurate a knowledge of Latin, in which, I believe, he was exceeded by no man of his time; he said, 'My master whipt me very well. Without that, Sir, I should have done nothing.' He told ...
... Langton, by whose favour a copy of it is now in my possession. It contains fragments of the intended plot, and speeches for the different persons of the drama, partly in the raw materials of prose, partly worked up into verse; as also a ...