The Works - Softcover

Samuel Johnson

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0371850851 ISBN 13: 9780371850855

Publisher: HardPress, 2021

Synopsis

The Works by Samuel Johnson is a twelve-volume edition of Johnson’s major writings, here represented in Volume V which gathers The Rambler essays among other material. The Rambler was Johnson’s influential late 1740s–early 1750s periodical, presenting moral, literary, and social reflections in hundreds of No. numbers; Volume V contains Nos. 71 through 140, a sequence exploring life, mortality, virtue, politeness, satire of critics, and the duties of intellectual and private life. The entries combine essays on ethics, aesthetics, and criticism with epistolary pieces and discussions of authorship, the responsibilities of critics, and the interplays between taste, merit, and patronage. The text also includes Johnson’s metrical and literary observations, notably on Milton’s versification and the theory of prose and poetry, as well as occasional dialogues and imagined letters that illuminate 18th-century manners and the republic of letters. The Works thus offers a window into Johnson’s moral philosophy, literary criticism, and the culture of The Rambler as a cornerstone of eighteenth-century English prose.

Edition details

• Publisher: HardPress
• Publication date: 2021
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0371850851
• ISBN 13: 9780371850855
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 462