The Oxford Handbook of Samuel Johnson
Jack Lynch, "The Oxford Handbook of Samuel Johnson "
English | ISBN: 0198794665 | 2022 | 704 pages | PDF | 79 MB
English | ISBN: 0198794665 | 2022 | 704 pages | PDF | 79 MB
No major author worked in more genres than Samuel Johnson–essays, poetry, fiction, criticism, biography, scholarly editing, lexicography, translation, sermons, journalism. His works are more extensive than those of any other canonical English writer, and no earlier writer's life was documented as thoroughly by contemporaries.
Because it's so difficult to know him thoroughly, people have made do with surrogates and simplifications. But Johnson was much more complicated than the popular image of 'Dr. Johnson' suggests: socially conservative but also one of the most radical abolitionists of his age, a firm believer in social hierarchy but an outspoken supporter of women intellectuals, an uncompromising Christian moralist but also a penetrating critic of family structures. Labels fit him poorly.