British Biography: A ReaderBiography 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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... sometimes retarded, or perplexedby multiplied combinations. We areall prompted bythe same motives, all deceived bythesame fallacies, all animated by hope, obstructed by danger, entangled by desire, and seduced by pleasure. [6] It ...
... sometimes sordidly, but always in hisown savageway. Johnson's involvement withthe trajectoryand contingencyoflives iscaptured inhis tripartite divisionof Savage's biography—from its blighted beginning, to its momentary triumph, and its ...
... sometime upon veryuneasy termswith herhusband, thoughta public confession of adultery the mostobvious and expeditious method of obtaining her liberty, and therefore declared that the child, with which shewas then great, was begotten by ...
... sometimes relatedan instance too extraordinaryto be omitted, as it affords a very just idea of his patron's character. [31] He was once desired by Sir Richard, with an air of theutmost importance, to come very early to his house thenext ...
... sometimes incite him to mention too ludicrously.A little knowledge of the world is sufficient to discover that such weaknessis very common, andthat thereare few whodo not sometimes, inthe wantonness of thoughtless mirth orthe heat of ...
Contents
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 | |