Dr Samuel Johnson (1709-84) is regarded as one of the outstanding figures of English literature, as a poet, essayist, moralist, critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer. This collected edition of his works - commissioned by the publisher within hours of Johnson's death, such was his celebrity - was published in 1787 in eleven volumes, edited by his literary executor, the musicologist Sir John Hawkins. Volume 2 contains the first part of his Lives of the Poets, his last major work. This was a commission to provide short accounts of over fifty poets of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and set a new standard for English literary biography. Although not all of the subjects have been regarded as eminent by posterity, and Johnson was criticised for brusque treatment of well-connected courtier poets now largely forgotten, the work was a great success.
- ISBN13 9781139056403
- Publish Date 7 September 2011 (first published 16 February 2010)
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country GB
- Publisher Cambridge University Press
- Imprint Cambridge University Press (Virtual Publishing)
- Format eBook
- Language English