Community and solitude : new essays on Johnson's circle / edited by Anthony W. Lee.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Lee, Anthony W., editor.

Series:

Transits : literature, thought & culture 1650-1850.

Transits : Literature, Thought & Culture 1650-1850

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Johnson, Samuel, 1709-1784--Friends and associates.

Johnson, Samuel.

Johnson, Samuel, 1709-1784--Contemporaries.

Johnson, Samuel, 1709-1784--Influence.

Authors, English--18th century--Biography.

Authors, English.

Intellectuals--England--Biography.

Intellectuals.

English literature--18th century--History and criticism.

English literature.

England--Intellectual life--18th century.

England.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (258 p.) : 1 table

Place of Publication:

Lewisburg, Pennsylvania : Bucknell University Press, 2019.

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

Samuel Johnson's life was situated within a rich social and intellectual community of friendships-and antagonisms. Community and Solitude is a collection of ten essays that explores relationships between Johnson and several of his main contemporaries-including James Boswell, Edmund Burke, Frances Burney, Robert Chambers, Oliver Goldsmith, Bennet Langton, Arthur Murphy, Richard Savage, Anna Seward, and Thomas Warton-and analyzes some of the literary productions emanating from the pressures within those relationships. In their detailed and careful examination of particular works situated within complex social and personal contexts, the essays in this volume offer a "thick" and illuminating description of Johnson's world that also engages with larger cultural and aesthetic issues, such as intertextuality, literary celebrity, narrative, the nature of criticism, race, slavery, and sensibility. Contributors: Christopher Catanese, James Caudle, Marilyn Francus, Christine Jackson-Holzberg, Claudia Thomas Kairoff, Elizabeth Lambert, Anthony W. Lee, James E. May, John Radner, and Lance Wilcox. Published by Bucknell University Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.

Contents:

Frontmatter

CONTENTS

Abbreviations

Introduction

1. Connecting with Three "Young Dogs": Johnson's Early Letters to Robert Chambers, Bennet Langton, and James Boswell

2. James Elphinston and Samuel Johnson: Contact, Irritations, and an "Argonautic" Letter

3. The Case of the Missing Hottentot: John Dun's Conversation with Samuel Johnson in Tour to the Hebrides as Reported by Boswell and Dun

4. Oliver Goldsmith's Revisions to The Traveller

5. "Down with Her, Burney!": Johnson, Burney, and the Politics of Literary Celebrity

6. In the First Circle: The Four Narrators of the Life of Savage

7. "Under the Shade of Exalted Merit": Arthur Murphy's A Poetical Epistle to Mr. Samuel Johnson, A.M.

8. Johnson, Burke, Boswell, and the Slavery Debate

9. Samuel Johnson and Anna Seward: Solitude and Sensibility

10. Johnson, Warton, and the Popular Reader

Acknowledgments

Bibliography

About the Contributors

Index

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

1-68448-026-4

OCLC:

1128180803