Samuel Johnson: Selected Writings: A Tercentenary Celebration by Samuel Johnson (PDF)

Description

Thanks to Boswell’s monumental biography of Samuel Johnson, we remember Dr. Johnson today as a great wit and conversationalist, the rationalist epitome and the sage of the Enlightenment. He is more often quoted than read, his name invoked in party conversation on such diverse topics as marriage, sleep, deceit, mental concentration, and patriotism, to generally humorous effect. But in Johnson’s own day, he was best known as an essayist, critic, and lexicographer: a gifted writer possessed of great force of mind and wisdom. Writing a century after Johnson, Ruskin wrote of Johnson’s essays: He “taught me to measure life, and distrust fortune…he saved me forever from false thoughts and futile speculations.” Peter Martin here presents “the heart of Johnson,” a selection of some of Johnson’s best moral and critical essays. At the center of this collection are the periodical essays from the Rambler, Adventurer, and Idler. Also included are Johnson’s great moral fable, Rasselas; the Prefaces to the Dictionary and his edition of Shakespeare; and selections from Lives of the Poets. Together, these works—allied in their literary, social, and moral concerns—are the ones that continue to speak urgently to readers today.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐A must purchase for fans of Samuel Johnson. The informed editor, Peter Martin, judiciously has selected portions from Dr. Johnson’s wide written legacy and made them available in a convenient form for the modern reader. Mr. Martin allows his hero, Dr. Johnson, to speak for himself without cluttering this book with his own commentary and asides.(I do highly recommend Peter Martin’s 2008 biography of Samuel Johnson, in which the editor of this book does give his commentary on the powerful life of the English man of letters.)I have read many books about Dr. Johnson: this one provided me with the handy opportunity to consider selections from his own writings that I had previously been aware of only indirectly, such as “Lives of the Poets” and “Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia.”

⭐This is a fairly broad selection of Johnson’s works, including a number of less common pieces, selections from the preface and notes to Shakespeare standing out to me, along with part of A Tour to the Hebrides. Johnson is well worth reading and any selection of his works will have value, but the introduction by Patrick Cruttwell is one of the best things on Johnson I have read in a long time and is itself easily worth the price of the book.

⭐Well, if I’ve only given this four stars, and not five, it’s not due to any failure of Samuel Johnson’s. Everything in this book is fine. But the anthology published by Oxford (edited by Donald Greene) is decidedly better.The Oxford Anthology has twice as many of his essays, the Preface to Shakespeare is -complete-, not “From…”, and the complete preface to the Dictionary; it also has his short fiction Rasselas (complete), as well as a sermon or two and some early examples of his biographies; the Vision of Theodore, Hermit of Tenerife.Honestly, I can’t complain about ANY anthology of Johnson; and this will do you very well. But the Oxford Anthology will do you so much better.

⭐Full with over sixty of Johnson’s exquisite and profound essays, along with some of his major works, this is certainly one of the best introductions to the remarkable depth and beauty of his writings available.He is one of the greatest masters of the English language that has ever lived (and not just because he wrote the very first English Dictionary), and deserves to be far more popular than he is.This is a beautiful, affordable, and wonderfully made book. The language is very lofty and richly endowed with great moral and artistic craftsmanship, so might be quite challenging and foreign (at first) for those more used to modern writing.Careful and reflective reading of this book is unquestionably enriching.

⭐The only criticism I would have is of the lack of hyperlink to the footnotes. It’s difficult to navigate between the text and the notes if these are not responsive to a click-through.The text is Johnson’s so there’s nothing to argue with but the above.

Keywords

Free Download Samuel Johnson: Selected Writings: A Tercentenary Celebration in PDF format
Samuel Johnson: Selected Writings: A Tercentenary Celebration PDF Free Download
Download Samuel Johnson: Selected Writings: A Tercentenary Celebration 2011 PDF Free
Samuel Johnson: Selected Writings: A Tercentenary Celebration 2011 PDF Free Download
Download Samuel Johnson: Selected Writings: A Tercentenary Celebration PDF
Free Download Ebook Samuel Johnson: Selected Writings: A Tercentenary Celebration