British Biography: A ReaderiUniverse, 2005 M07 14 - 320 páginas Biography as a literary genre is largely the product of the eighteenth century and of one seminal work, James Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson (1791). Boswell's innovations revolutionized the genre and made it the target of suppression and censorship. He sought not only to memorialize a great man but also to reveal his flaws. Boswell reported long stretches of Johnson's conversation, noted his mannerisms, and in general gave an intimate picture such as no biography had ever before dared to attempt. After Boswell, there was a retreat from his bolder innovations, which amounted to self-censorship on the biographer's part. When Thomas Carlyle's biographer, James Anthony Froude, braved this trend against truth and allowed his subject's dark side to show, he was vilified in the press. The tensions between discretion and candor have endured in British biography since Froude, a point Carl Rollyson makes in the reviews of contemporary British biographers he includes in British Biography, which also contains Johnson's full-length biography of Richard Savage, excerpts from Boswell's Life of Johnson as well selections from and commentaries on Southey's biography of Nelson, Mrs. Gaskell's biography of Charlotte Bront, and the revolutionary work of Froude and Strachey. |
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... andthe hero could benotonly the soldierbut the literary figure—the subject not merely of a biographical essayon the life and work,as inJohnson's day,but of themostpenetrating, microscopic reading of personality that seemed—even if ...
... and the low, the great and the small, make their beds and sleep in them. [1] All joy or sorrow for the happiness or calamities of others is produced by an act of the imagination, that realizes the event however fictitious, or ...
... andthe grosser features ofhismind; and it maybe easily imagined how much of thislittle knowledge maybe lostin impartingit, and how soon a succession ofcopies will lose all resemblance of the original. [11]Ifthe biographerwrites from ...
... andthe quality of thatstory, rather than a life that can be abstracted fromthe biography and assessed. Thus the biographer concludes: “Thoseare no proper judges ofhis conduct, who have slumbered away their time onthe downof plenty ...
... and the misfortunes ofthose whose eminence drew upon theman universal attention have been more carefully recorded, because they were more generally observed, and have in reality been only more conspicuous than those of others, not more ...
Contenido
READINGS THE RAMBLER NO 60 JOHNSONS LIFE OF SAVAGE 1744 | |
EXCEPT FROM ROBERT SOUTHEYS LIFE OF NELSON | |
EXCERPTS FROM ELIZABETH GASKELLS LIFEOF | |
EXCERPT FROM FROUDES LIFE OF CARLYLE | |
LYTTON STRACHEY EMINENT VICTORIANS 1918 | |
REVIEWS | |
JOHN FOWLES | |