Samuel Johnson: Selected Writings: A Tercentenary Celebration

By Samuel Johnson

Book Overview

Thanks to Boswell’s monumental biography of Samuel Johnson, we remember Dr. Johnson today as a great wit and conversationalist, the rationalist epitome and the sage of the Enlightenment. He is more often quoted than read, his name invoked in party conversation on such diverse topics as marriage, sleep, deceit, mental concentration, and patriotism, to generally humorous effect. But in Johnson’s own day, he was best known as an essayist, critic, and lexicographer: a gifted writer possessed of great force of mind and wisdom. Writing a century after Johnson, Ruskin wrote of Johnson’s essays: He “taught me to measure life, and distrust fortune&he saved me forever from false thoughts and futile speculations.” Peter Martin here presents “the heart of Johnson,” a selection of some of Johnson’s best moral and critical essays. At the center of this collection are the periodical essays from the Rambler, Adventurer, and Idler. Also included are Johnson’s great moral fable, Rasselas; the Prefaces to the Dictionary and his edition of Shakespeare; and selections from Lives of the Poets. Together, these works-allied in their literary, social, and moral concerns-are the ones that continue to speak urgently to readers today.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0674035852
• ISBN13: 9780674035850
• Release Date: September 2009
• Publisher: Belknap Press
• Length: 536 Pages
• Weight: 2.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.5" x 1.8" x 6.5"

Customer Reviews

In His Own Words

A must purchase for fans of Samuel Johnson. The informed editor, Peter Martin, judiciously has selected portions from Dr. Johnson's wide written legacy and made them available in a convenient form for the modern reader. Mr. Martin allows his hero, Dr. Johnson, to speak for himself without cluttering this book with his own commentary and asides. (I do highly recommend Peter Martin's 2008 biography of Samuel Johnson, in which the editor of this book does give his commentary on the powerful life of the English man of letters.) I have read many books about Dr. Johnson: this one provided me with the handy opportunity to consider selections from his own writings that I had previously been aware of only indirectly, such as "Lives of the Poets" and "Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia."

The Oxford Anthology is decidedly better.

Well, if I've only given this four stars, and not five, it's not due to any failure of Samuel Johnson's. Everything in this book is fine. But the anthology published by Oxford (edited by Donald Greene) is decidedly better. The Oxford Anthology has twice as many of his essays, the Preface to Shakespeare is -complete-, not "From...", and the complete preface to the Dictionary; it also has his short fiction Rasselas (complete), as well as a sermon or two and some early examples of his biographies; the Vision of Theodore, Hermit of Tenerife.Honestly, I can't complain about ANY anthology of Johnson; and this will do you very well. But the Oxford Anthology will do you so much better.