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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... ofhis personal character which represents him as careful of his health, and negligent of his life. [9] Butbiography has oftenbeen allotted to writers who seem very little acquainted withthe nature oftheir task, orvery negligent about ...
... is likewise a pitydue tothe country.”If we owe regardtothe memory ofthe dead,there is yet more respect to be paid to knowledge, to virtue, and to truth. JOHNSON'S LIFE OF SAVAGE (1744) Johnson understood thefaults ofhis friend,
A Reader Carl Rollyson. JOHNSON'S. LIFE. OF. SAVAGE. (1744). Johnson understood thefaults ofhis friend, thepoet RichardSavage, and didnotminimize them, although he inventeda language for his hero's transgressions that maintains his empathy ...
... ofhis conduct, who have slumbered away their time onthe downof plenty; norwill any wise man presume to say, 'Had I been in Savage's condition, I should have lived orwritten better than Savage.'”What matters, Johnson emphasizes, is “this ...
... he washis godfather, and gave himhisown name, whichwasby his direction inserted in the register of St. Andrew's parish in Holborn, but unfortunately lefthim to the care ofhis mother, whom, asshewas now set free from her husband, he ...
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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 | |