The Life of MR Richard Savage

By Samuel Johnson and Joseph Wright Draffen Samuel Johnson

Book Overview

The Life of Mr Richard Savagewas the first important book by a then-unknown Grub Street hack, Samuel Johnson. Richard Savage (1697--1743) was a poet, playwright, and satirist who claimed to be the illegitimate son of a late earl and to have been denied his inheritance and viciously persecuted by his mother. He was urbane, charming, a brilliant conversationalist, but also irresponsible and impulsive. His role in a tavern brawl almost led him to the gallows, though his life was saved by an eleventh-hour pardon by the King. Over time he attracted many supporters, practically all of whom he managed to alienate by the time of his death in a debtors' prison in Bristol. Johnson, who had been friends with Savage for a little over a year, drew on published documents and his own memories of Savage to produce one of the first great English biographies. The edition is supplemented by other writings by Johnson, a selection of Savage's prose and verse, contemporary and posthumous responses to Savage and to Johnson's biography, and selections by Johnson's first two major biographers, Sir John Hawkins and James Boswell.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1554811554
• ISBN13: 9781554811557
• Release Date: June 2016
• Publisher: Broadview Press Inc
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 8.4" x 5.5"