Samuel Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language, the first great English dictionary and one of the most famous books in the English language, appeared in April 1755. To commemorate the 250th anniversary, this volume brings together fourteen original essays by international scholars representing several disciplines: literature, lexicology, linguistics, textual criticism and bibliography. The essays explore familiar and unfamiliar aspects of Johnson's masterpiece, ranging from the history of patronage to the book's typographical design, from the political background to the treatment of compound words. Challenging the myths surrounding the book and offering the most comprehensive and wide-ranging study of the Dictionary ever attempted, these essays present the latest scholarship on the Dictionary and open up new perspectives and directions for future research.

In the first extended treatment of the debates surrounding public deception in eighteenth-century Britain, Jack Lynch contends that forgery, fakery, and fraud make explicit the usually unspoken grounds on which Britons made sense of their world. Confrontations with inauthenticity, in other words, bring tacitly understood conceptions of reality to the surface. Drawing on a wide range of contemporary print and manuscript sources"not only books and pamphlets, but ballads, comic prints, legal proceedings, letters, and diaries"Lynch focuses on the debates they provoked, rather than the forgers themselves. He offers a comprehensive treatment of the criticism surrounding fraud in most of the noteworthy controversies of the long eighteenth century. To this end, his study is structured around topics related to the arguments over deception in Britain, whether they concerned George Psalmanazar's Formosan hoax at the beginning of the eighteenth century or William Henry Ireland's Shakespearean imposture at the end. Beginning with the question of what constitutes deception and ending with an illuminating chapter on what was at stake in these debates for eighteenth-century British thinkers, Lynch's accessibly written study takes the reader through the means"whether simple, sophisticated, or tortuously argued"by which partisans on both sides struggled to define which of the apparent contradictions were sufficient to disqualify a claim to authenticity. Fakery, Lynch persuasively argues, transports us to the heart of eighteenth-century notions of the value of evidence, of the mechanisms of perception and memory, of the relationship between art and life, of historicism, and of human motivation.

In the first extended treatment of the debates surrounding public deception in eighteenth-century Britain, Jack Lynch contends that forgery, fakery, and fraud make explicit the usually unspoken grounds on which Britons made sense of their world. Confrontations with inauthenticity, in other words, bring tacitly understood conceptions of reality to the surface. Drawing on a wide range of contemporary print and manuscript sources"not only books and pamphlets, but ballads, comic prints, legal proceedings, letters, and diaries"Lynch focuses on the debates they provoked, rather than the forgers themselves. He offers a comprehensive treatment of the criticism surrounding fraud in most of the noteworthy controversies of the long eighteenth century. To this end, his study is structured around topics related to the arguments over deception in Britain, whether they concerned George Psalmanazar's Formosan hoax at the beginning of the eighteenth century or William Henry Ireland's Shakespearean imposture at the end. Beginning with the question of what constitutes deception and ending with an illuminating chapter on what was at stake in these debates for eighteenth-century British thinkers, Lynch's accessibly written study takes the reader through the means"whether simple, sophisticated, or tortuously argued"by which partisans on both sides struggled to define which of the apparent contradictions were sufficient to disqualify a claim to authenticity. Fakery, Lynch persuasively argues, transports us to the heart of eighteenth-century notions of the value of evidence, of the mechanisms of perception and memory, of the relationship between art and life, of historicism, and of human motivation.

In The Age of Elizabeth in the Age of Johnson, Jack Lynch explores eighteenth-century British conceptions of the Renaissance, and the historical, intellectual, and cultural uses to which the past was put during the period. Scholars, editors, historians, religious thinkers, linguists and literary critics of the period all defined themselves in relation to 'the last age' or 'the age of Elizabeth'. Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century thinkers reworked older historical schemes to suit their own needs, turning to the ages of Petrarch and Poliziano, Erasmus and Scaliger, Shakespeare, Spenser, and Queen Elizabeth to define their culture in contrast to the preceding age. They derived a powerful sense of modernity from the comparison, which proved essential to the constitution of a national character. This interdisciplinary study will be of interest to cultural as well as literary historians of the eighteenth century.

Samuel Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language, the first great English dictionary and one of the most famous books in the English language, appeared in April 1755. To commemorate the 250th anniversary, this volume brings together fourteen original essays by international scholars representing several disciplines: literature, lexicology, linguistics and bibliography. The essays explore familiar and unfamiliar aspects of Johnson's masterpiece, ranging from the history of patronage to the book's typographical design, from the political background to the treatment of compound words. Challenging the myths surrounding the book and offering the most comprehensive and wide-ranging study of the Dictionary ever attempted, these essays present fresh scholarship on the Dictionary and open up novel perspectives and directions for future research.

Jack Lynch explores eighteenth-century British conceptions of the Renaissance, and the historical, intellectual, and cultural uses to which the past was put. He argues that scholars, editors, historians, religious thinkers, linguists, and literary critics defined themselves in relation to "the last age" or "the age of Elizabeth". This interdisciplinary study is of interest to cultural as well as literary historians of the eighteenth century.

Few authors benefit from being set in their contemporary context more than Samuel Johnson. Samuel Johnson in Context is a guide to his world, offering readers a comprehensive account of eighteenth-century life and culture as it relates to his work. Short, lively and eminently readable chapters illuminate not only Johnson's own life, writings and career, but the literary, critical, journalistic, social, political, scientific, artistic, medical and financial contexts in which his works came into being. Written by leading experts in Johnson and in eighteenth-century studies, these chapters offer both depth and range of information and suggestions for further study and research. Richly illustrated, with a chronology of Johnson's life and works and an extensive bibliography, this book is a major new work of reference on eighteenth-century culture and the age of Johnson.

Updated and expanded from one of the most popular grammar sites on the web, this book provides a modern guide to English usage for the 21st century. With topics arranged alphabetically and written in an enjoyable and readable tone, The English Language: A User's Guide will help students and writers understand the nature of the language, explaining the why of the rules as well as what constitutes good grammar and style. Going beyond the prescriptive wrong /right examples, Jack Lynch includes examples of weak/strong, good/better, disputed/preferred, and informal/formal usage. Also included: Introductory Essay Using This Guide A Guide to Citation Additional Readings An online companion is available.

In 1773, James Boswell made a long-planned journey across the Scottish Highlands with his English friend Samuel Johnson; the two spent more than a hundred days together. Their tour of the Hebrides resulted in two books, A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland (1775), a kind of locodescriptive ethnography and Johnson's most important work between his Shakespeare edition and his Lives of the Poets. The other, Boswell's Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson (1785), a travel narrative experimenting with biography, the first application of the techniques he would use in his Life of Samuel Johnson (1791). These two works form a natural pair and, owing that they cover much of the same material, are often read together, focusing on the Scottish highlands. The text presents a lightly-edited version of both works, preserving the original orthography and corrected typographical errors to fit modern grammar standards. The introduction and notes provide clear and concise explanations on Johnson and Boswell's respective careers, their friendship and grand biographical projects. It also examines the Scottish Enlightenment, the status of England and Scotland during the Reformation through to the Union of the Crowns, and the Jacobite

Few authors benefit from being set in their contemporary context more than Samuel Johnson. Samuel Johnson in Context is a guide to his world, offering readers a comprehensive account of eighteenth-century life and culture as it relates to his work. Short, lively and eminently readable chapters illuminate not only Johnson's own life, writings and career, but the literary, critical, journalistic, social, political, scientific, artistic, medical and financial contexts in which his works came into being. Written by leading experts in Johnson and in eighteenth-century studies, these chapters offer both depth and range of information and suggestions for further study and research. Richly illustrated, with a chronology of Johnson's life and works and an extensive bibliography, this book is a major new work of reference on eighteenth-century culture and the age of Johnson.

In bringing biography and celebrity together, the essays in Making Stars interrogate contemporary and current understandings of each. Although biography was not invented in the eighteenth century, the period saw the emergence of works that focus on individuals who are interesting as much, if not more, for their everyday, lived experience than for their status or actions. At the same time, celebrity emerged as public fascination for the private lives of publicly visible individuals. Biography and celebrity are mutually constitutive, but in complex and varied ways that this volume unpacks. Contributors to this volume present us a picture of eighteenth-century celebrity that was mediated across multiple sites, demonstrating that eighteenth-century celebrity culture in Britain was more pervasive, diverse and, in many ways, more egalitarian, than previously supposed.

BRAGG V1 The first three, powerhouse novels in Jack Lynch's Edgar Award-nominated and two-time Shamus Award-nominated Bragg series. Private investigator Peter Bragg learns that The Dead Never Forget when he's hired by a retired mobster to find out who is threatening his eleven-year-old daughter. Bragg's relentless search for The Missing and the Dead pits him against a brilliant serial killer obsessed with the expressions of death on his victim's faces. Edgar Award Finalist Bragg becomes the hunter and the hunted as killers descend on the city to find thirty-two Pieces of Death -- gem-encrusted chess pieces smuggled out of China that are worth a staggering fortune. Shamus Award Finalist "Tough, taut and terse... literate without being lofty, not unlike the work of Hammett himself," The Thrilling Detective "First-rate, well-plotted," 101 Knights: A Survey of American Detective Fiction "Bragg is authentic, gripping, gritty," San Francisco Examiner

The move to a new publisher has given The Age of Johnson: A Scholarly Annual the opportunity to recommit to what it does best: present to a wide readership cant-free scholarly articles and essays and searching book reviews, all featuring a wide variety of approaches, written by both seasoned scholars and relative newcomers. Volume 24 features commentary on a range of Johnsonian topics: his reaction to Milton, his relation to the Allen family, his notes in his edition of Shakespeare, his use of Oliver Goldsmith in his Dictionary, and his always fascinating Nachleben. The volume also includes articles on topics of strong interest to Johnson: penal reform, Charlotte Lennox's professional literary career, and the "conjectural history" of Homer in the eighteenth century. For more than two decades, The Age of Johnson has presented a vast corpus of Johnsonian studies "in the broadest sense," as founding editor Paul J. Korshin put it in the preface to Volume 1, and it has retained the interest of a wide readership. In thousands of pages of articles, review essays, and reviews, The Age of Johnson has made a permanent contribution to our understanding of the eighteenth century, and particularly of Samuel Johnson, his circle, and his interests, and has also served as an outlet for writers who are not academics but have something important to say about the eighteenth century.   ISSN 0884-5816.

In the most comprehensive and up-to-date overview of the poetry published in Britain between the Restoration and the end of the eighteenth century, forty-four authorities from six countries survey the poetry of the age in all its richness and diversity-serious and satirical, public and private, by men and women, nobles and peasants, whether published in deluxe editions or sung on the streets. The contributors discuss poems in social contexts, poetic identities, poetic subjects, poetic form, poetic genres, poetic devices, and criticism. Even experts in eighteenth-century poetry will see familiar poems from new angles, and all readers will encounter poems they've never read before. The book is not a chronologically organized literary history, nor an encyclopaedia, nor a collection of thematically related essays; rather it is an attempt to provide a systematic overview of these poetic works, and to restore it to a position of centrality in modern criticism.

We all think we know what a dictionary is for and how to use one, so most of us skip the first pages-the front matter-and go right to the words we wish to look up. Yet dictionary users have not always known how English "works" and my book reproduces and examines for the first time important texts in which seventeenth- and eighteenth-century dictionary authors explain choices and promote ideas to readers, their "end users." Unlike French, Spanish, and Italian dictionaries compiled during this time and published by national academies, the goal of English dictionaries was usually not to "purify" the language, though some writers did attempt to regularize it. Instead, English lexicographers aimed to teach practical ways for their users to learn English, improve their language skills, even transcend their social class. The anthology strives to be comprehensive in its coverage of the first phase of this tradition from the early seventeenth century-from Robert Cawdrey's (1604) A Table Alphabeticall, to Samuel Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language (1755), and finally, to Noah Webster's An American Dictionary of the English Language (1828). The book puts English dictionaries in historical, national, linguistic, literary, cultural contexts, presenting lexicographical trends and the change in the English language over two centuries, and examines how writers attempted to control it by appealing to various pedagogical and legal authorities. Moreover, the development of dictionary and attempts to codify English language and grammar coincided with the arc of the British Empire; the promulgation of "proper" English has been a subject of debate and inquiry for centuries and, in part, dictionaries and the teaching of English historically have been used to present and support ideas about what is correct, regardless of how and where English is actually used. The authors who wrote these texts apply ideas about capitalism, nationalism, sex and social status to favor one language theory over another. I show how dictionaries are not neutral documents: they challenge or promote biases. The book presents and analyzes the history of lexicography, demonstrating how and why dictionaries evolved into the reference books we now often take for granted and we can see that there is no easy answer to the question of "who owns English."

In bringing biography and celebrity together, the essays in Making Stars interrogate contemporary and current understandings of each. Although biography was not invented in the eighteenth century, the period saw the emergence of works that focus on individuals who are interesting as much, if not more, for their everyday, lived experience than for their status or actions. At the same time, celebrity emerged as public fascination for the private lives of publicly visible individuals. Biography and celebrity are mutually constitutive, but in complex and varied ways that this volume unpacks. Contributors to this volume present us a picture of eighteenth-century celebrity that was mediated across multiple sites, demonstrating that eighteenth-century celebrity culture in Britain was more pervasive, diverse and, in many ways, more egalitarian, than previously supposed.

Volume 25 of 1650-1850: Ideas, Aesthetics, and Inquiries in the Early Modern Era investigates the local textures that make up the whole cloth of the Enlightenment. Ranging from China to Cheltenham and from Spinoza to civil insurrection, volume 25 celebrates the emergence of long-eighteenth-century culture from particularities and prodigies. Unfurling in the folds of this volume is a special feature on playwright, critic, and literary theorist John Dennis. Edited by Claude Willan, the feature returns a major player in eighteenth-century literary culture to his proper role at the center of eighteenth-century politics, art, publishing, and dramaturgy. This celebration of John Dennis mingles with a full company of essays in the character of revealing case studies. Essays on a veritable world of topics-on Enlightenment philosophy in China; on riots as epitomes of Anglo-French relations; on domestic animals as observers; on gothic landscapes; and on prominent literati such as Jonathan Swift, Arthur Murphy, and Samuel Johnson-unveil eye-opening perspectives on a 'long' century that prized diversity and that looked for transformative events anywhere, everywhere, all the time. Topping it all off is a full portfolio of reviews evaluating the best books on the literature, philosophy, and the arts of this abundant era.

This title offers in-depth critical discussions of his life and works. To this day Nathaniel Hawthorne remains one of the most studied authors in the English language. His literary output included tales, novels, and essays, and his influence was felt by writers the world over. As stated in Jack Lynch's introduction to this volume, Hawthorne's works 'can be found in virtually every library in the English-speaking world. No responsible survey course on American literature is complete without ""The Scarlet Letter""; no reputable collection of American short stories can omit ""The Birth-mark"" or ""Rappaccini's Daughter"". He stands at the center of nineteenth-century American literature.' Indeed Hawthorne is considered to be among the forefathers of American literature. Edited by literary scholar Jack Lynch of Rutgers University, Newark, this volume in the ""Critical Insights"" series brings together some of the high points of the last half-decade of Hawthorne criticism. The essays contained within present a variety of critical viewpoints and an array of critical approaches. Some consider the cultural and historical contexts of Hawthorne's works, while others examine the state of Hawthorne studies through changing critical fashions. Some of the essays look to biographical speculation, some consider Hawthorne's psychology, and yet others look closely to those issues that concerned Hawthorne most. Hawthorne's major work, ""The Scarlet Letter"" receives critical attention with essays by Hugo McPherson, John G. Bayer, and Evans Lansing Smith, while some of Hawthorne's stories are examined in essays by Kathryn B. McKee and Bill Christophersen. His essays receive careful consideration by Thomas R. Moore, while well-known scholars such as Leo B. Levy, Nina Baym, Claudia D. Johnson, and Melvin W. Askew probe broad subjects such as 19th century perfectionism, the fall of man, and notions of the sublime. While necessarily a sampling of the critical approaches to Hawthorne's work, the 18 essays contained in this volume provide an excellent starting point for those readers interested in studying this 19th century American literary master. Each essay is 5,000 words in length, and all essays conclude with a list of ""Works Cited,"" along with endnotes.

This title includes in-depth critical discussions of his life and works. Perhaps no figure is more central to the myth and promise of America than Benjamin Franklin. A true Renaissance man, Franklin conducted scientific experiments, wrote political satires and treatises, and is credited with numerous inventions. As volume editor Jack Lynch points out, Franklin's name 'is the only name that appears on the four most important documents in the establishment of the United States: the Declaration of Independence, the Treaty of Paris, the Treaty of Alliance with France, and the United States Constitution'. Edited and introduced by 18th century scholar Jack Lynch, Professor of English at Rutgers University, Newark, this volume examines several facets of America's most famous polymath. Lynch's introduction considers the essays collected in this volume as he tries to pin down the iconic and larger-than-life Franklin. Clark Davis provides a biography of Franklin after which Bradley Bazzle considers the Autobiography as a central part of the American creation myth, part memoir, part performance. Original essays by Neil Heims, Gurdip Panesar, Maura Grace Harrington, and Matthew Bolton collectively consider Franklin, his times, and his impact on American Culture. Heims examines the culture of 18th Century America and the very public figure of Franklin while Panesar considers the difficulties critics have had in painting a complete portrait of Franklin, due in large part to his multifacetedness. Maura Grace Harrington looks at the Autobiography through the lens of fatherhood, both personal and spiritual while Matthew Bolton offers an original interpretation of the so-called 'Lost Generation' as a response to Franklin's legacy. The selection of reprinted essays begins with Sherry Ann Beaudrea and Stanley Finger's examination of the legacies of Franklin and his Dutch-born medical correspondent Jan Ingenhousz. This essay is followed by one by Betsy Erkkila, who suggests Franklin was partially responsible for a new conceptualization of the body. A. Owen Aldridge provides both careful close reading and a thorough consideration of biographical contexts in his consideration of Franklin's ""The Elysian Fields"". Aldridge is followed by Jennifer Jordan Baker, who argues that it's impossible to make sense of Franklin's world without an understanding of the economic situation his country faced. Jennifer T. Kennedy's essay is a consideration of Franklin the printer confronting death, and his writing as a kind of repetition. In the volume penultimate essay, Christina Lupton examines artistic recycling in both Franklin and Laurence Stern while in the volume's final essay Ralph Frasca considers Franklin in the context of his support of the freedom and responsibility of the press. Each essay is 5,000 words in length, and all essays conclude with a list of 'Works Cited', along with endnotes.