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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... poem which he published many years afterwards. On occasion of a copy of verses, in whichthe failings of good men were recounted, andin which the author had endeavoured toillustrate hisposition, that 'the best may sometimes deviate from ...
... poets in The Bathos were, as he was directed to assert, 'set down at random,' for when he was chargedby one ofhis friends with puttinghis name to such an improbability he had no other answer tomake than that 'he did not thinkofit'; and ...
... poem,of which thedesign iscomprised in these lines: 'I fly allpublic care, all venal strife, To try the still compar'd withactive life; To prove, by these the sons of menmay owe The fruits of bliss to bursting clouds of woe; That ev'n ...
... poem he has not been able to forbear one touch upon the cruelty of his mother, which, though remarkably delicate and tender, isa proof how deep an impression it had uponhis mind. [124] This must be at least acknowledged, which ought to ...
... poem was addressed to the Lord Tyrconnel, notonly in the first lines, but in a formal dedication filled with the highest strains of panegyrick and the warmest professions of gratitude,but by no means remarkable for delicacy ofconnection ...
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 | |