To mark the tercentenary of Samuel Johnson's birth in 2009, the specially-commissioned essays contained here review his scholarly reputation. An international team of experts reflects authoritatively on the various dimensions of literary, historical, critical and ethical life touched by Johnson's extraordinary achievement. The volume distinctively casts its net widely and combines consistently innovative thinking on Johnson's historical role with a fresh sense of present criticism. Chapters cover subjects as diverse as Johnson's moral philosophy, his legal thought, his influence on Jane Austen, and the question of the Johnson canon. The contributors examine the larger theoretical and scholarly contexts in which it is now possible to situate his work, and from which it may often be necessary to differentiate it. All the contributors have a distinguished record of scholarship in eighteenth-century studies, Johnson scholarship, and cultural history and theory.

Students, scholars, and general readers alike will find the New Cambridge Companion to Samuel Johnson deeply informed and appealingly written. Each newly commissioned chapter explores aspects of Johnson's writing and thought, including his ethical grasp of life, his views of language, the roots of his ideas in Renaissance humanism, and his skeptical-humane style. Among the themes engaged are history, disability, gender, politics, race, slavery, Johnson's representation in art, and the significance of the Yale Edition. Works discussed include Johnson's poetry and fiction, his moral essays and political tracts, his Shakespeare edition and Dictionary, and his critical, biographical, and travel writing. A narrated Further Reading provides an informative guide to the study of Johnson, and a substantial Introduction highlights how his literary practice, philosophical values, and life experience provide a challenge to readers new and established. Through fresh, integrated insights, this authoritative guide reveals the surprising contemporaneity of Johnson's thought.

Students, scholars, and general readers alike will find the New Cambridge Companion to Samuel Johnson deeply informed and appealingly written. Each newly commissioned chapter explores aspects of Johnson's writing and thought, including his ethical grasp of life, his views of language, the roots of his ideas in Renaissance humanism, and his skeptical-humane style. Among the themes engaged are history, disability, gender, politics, race, slavery, Johnson's representation in art, and the significance of the Yale Edition. Works discussed include Johnson's poetry and fiction, his moral essays and political tracts, his Shakespeare edition and Dictionary, and his critical, biographical, and travel writing. A narrated Further Reading provides an informative guide to the study of Johnson, and a substantial Introduction highlights how his literary practice, philosophical values, and life experience provide a challenge to readers new and established. Through fresh, integrated insights, this authoritative guide reveals the surprising contemporaneity of Johnson's thought.

To mark the tercentenary of Samuel Johnson's birth in 2009, the specially-commissioned essays contained here review his scholarly reputation. An international team of experts reflects authoritatively on the various dimensions of literary, historical, critical and ethical life touched by Johnson's extraordinary achievement. The volume distinctively casts its net widely and combines consistently innovative thinking on Johnson's historical role with a fresh sense of present criticism. Chapters cover subjects as diverse as Johnson's moral philosophy, his legal thought, his influence on Jane Austen, and the question of the Johnson canon. The contributors examine the larger theoretical and scholarly contexts in which it is now possible to situate his work, and from which it may often be necessary to differentiate it. All the contributors have a distinguished record of scholarship in eighteenth-century studies, Johnson scholarship, and cultural history and theory.

This is a radical introduction to the Life of Johnson. It discusses the main structural, dramatic, historical and imaginative aspects of the work, and establishes its intellectual contexts: Hume's philosophy, earlier biographical writings by Boswell, and the French and German Enlightenment and romantic traditions. Professor Clingham offers an account of the Life based upon reassessment of the nature of biography, of Boswell's style and thought, and of Johnson's own works. As he examines the Life's complex psychological, emotional and artistic facets, a fresh picture of Boswell as biographer emerges. The book also provides a table of the principal scenes and conversations in the Life, as well as a chronological table of Boswell's life and times and a guide to further reading.

Boswell's Life of Johnson is established as one of the foremost literary biographies in the English language. This 1991 collection of essays, commemorating its bicentenary, investigates Boswell's achievements and limitations in both literary and personal contexts, and goes beyond the Life to examine the full range of Boswell's writings and interests (in legal, social, theological, political and linguistic fields). Drawing Boswell out of Johnson's shadow, the volume places him in a wider context, juxtaposing Boswell with other contemporaries and compatriots in the Scottish enlightenment, such as Hume, Robertson and Blair. In addition it investigates some of the critical and theoretical questions surrounding the notion of biographical representation in the Life itself. Boswell emerges as a writer engaged throughout his literary career in constructing a self or series of selves out of his divided Scottish identity. This collection combines archival research with fresh critical perspectives and constitutes a timely review of Boswell's status in eighteenth-century literary studies.

Johnson, Writing, and Memory demonstrates the importance of memory in Samuel Johnson's oeuvre. Greg Clingham argues that this is a notion of memory that is derived from the process of historical and creative writing, and is found to be embodied in works of literature and other cultural forms. He examines Johnson's writing, including his biographical writing, as it intersects with eighteenth-century thought on literature, history, fiction and law and in its subsequent compatibility with and resistance to modern theory. Clingham's widely researched study provides an account of Johnson's intellectual positions that incorporates the challenges they pose to recent critical theory, and argues for Johnson's inclusion in a new theorisation of terms such as 'authority', 'nature' and 'memory'. Clingham does this work of intellectual abstraction while remaining focused in the concrete realities of Johnson's writing itself, offering a theoretically nuanced and original account of Johnson's work.

This Companion provides a unique introduction and guide to the works and life of one of the key figures in English literary history. The source of endless familiar aphorisms, the compiler of the first great dictionary in English, the greatest of essayists, and one of the most distinctive characters and conversationalists in our literary culture, Johnson is here surveyed in his entirety. Chapters on the major works, his life, conversation, letters and critical reception appear alongside fresh thematic essays, a chronology and a guide to further reading.

Boswell's Life of Johnson is established as one of the foremost literary biographies in the English language. This 1991 collection of essays, commemorating its bicentenary, investigates Boswell's achievements and limitations in both literary and personal contexts, and goes beyond the Life to examine the full range of Boswell's writings and interests (in legal, social, theological, political and linguistic fields). Drawing Boswell out of Johnson's shadow, the volume places him in a wider context, juxtaposing Boswell with other contemporaries and compatriots in the Scottish enlightenment, such as Hume, Robertson and Blair. In addition it investigates some of the critical and theoretical questions surrounding the notion of biographical representation in the Life itself. Boswell emerges as a writer engaged throughout his literary career in constructing a self or series of selves out of his divided Scottish identity. This collection combines archival research with fresh critical perspectives and constitutes a timely review of Boswell's status in eighteenth-century literary studies.