History of Rasselas: Prince of Abyssinia (Wordsworth Classics)

RASSELAS is a provocative fable about "the choice of life." Bored by the endless contentment of "the happy valley" in which he has been brought up, Prince Rasselas escapes with his sister. The rove the world searching for the secret of happiness and striving to find the ideal way to live. Repeatedly the pleasures they glimpse dissolve on closer acquaintance, and the great men they admire prove to be flawed. Where, then, are happiness and purpose to be found?

These questions, of course, remain open for every generation; but perhaps no one has dicussed them with more wisdom and humanity than Dr. Samuel Johnson. RASSELAS is a searching and often darkly humorous commentary on the human condition as well as a classic of English prose.

In Samuel Johnson’s classic philosophical tale, the prince and princess of Abissinia escape their confinement in the Happy Valley and conduct an ultimately unsuccessful search for a choice of life that leads to happiness. Johnson uses the conventions of the Oriental tale to depict a universal restlessness of desire. The excesses of Orientalism―its superfluous splendours, its despotic tyrannies, its riotous pleasures―cannot satisfy us. His tale challenges us by showing the problem of finding happiness to be insoluble while still dignifying our quest for fulfillment.

The appendices to this Broadview edition include reviews and biographies, selections from the sequel Dinarbas (1790), and the complete text of Elizabeth Pope Whately’s The Second Part of the History of Rasselas (1835). Selections from Johnson’s translation of the travel narrative A Voyage to Abyssinia, as well as his Oriental tales in the Rambler, are also included, along with another popular tale, Joseph Addison’s “The Vision of Mirzah,” and selections from Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s Turkish Embassy Letters.