Samuel JohnsonHe 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." |
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... verse and other kinds of writing were changing , perhaps as rapidly as in any decade of English history.30 Eventually the experimentation would be sorted out , especially when readers took to what Johnson called " the modern form of ...
... verse of his time ? Clearly , he thought his work part of a long reformation in poetry - not backward but forward looking . After centuries of progress , the im- provement and refinement of versification had reached a grand climax in ...
... verse of his young friends Collins and Smart . And he paid a heavy forfeit for his princi- ples : he did not belong to a school , and those who did considered him an enemy of progress . Many Romantic poets grew up with the bogy of ...
Contents
the Western Islands of Scotland | 234 |
The Lives of the English Poets | 259 |
Johnsons Endings | 295 |
Copyright | |
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