Customer Reviews
Review this book!
Bibliographic Details
Publisher: Johns Hopkins Univ Pr
Published date: 1997
Size: 5.75 x 9 inches
Weight: 1.1 pounds
Pages: 270
Publisher's Notes
If readers of the twentieth century feel overwhelmed by the proliferation of writing and information, they can find in Samuel Johnson a sympathetic companion. Johnson's career coincided with the rapid expansion of publishing in England--not only in English, but in Latin and Greek; not only in books, but in reviews, journals, broadsides, pamphlets, and books about books. In 1753 Johnson imagined a time when "writers will, perhaps, be multiplied, till no readers will be found." Three years later, he wrote that England had become "a nation of authors" in which "every man must be content to read his book to himself."In Samuel Johnson and the Life of Reading, Robert DeMaria considers the surprising influence of one of the greatest readers in English literature. Johnson's relationship to books not only reveals much about his life and times, DeMaria contends, but also provides a dramatic counterpoint to modern reading habits. As a superior practitioner of the craft, Johnson provides a compelling model for how to read--indeed, he provides different models for different kinds of reading. DeMaria shows how Johnson recognized early that not all reading was alike--some requiring intense concentration, some suited for cursory glances, some requiring silence, some best appreciated amid the chatter of a coffeehouse. Considering the remarkable range of Johnson's reading, DeMaria discovers in one extraordinary career a synoptic view of the subject of reading.
Similar books
A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland/the Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides/2 Books in 1
by James Boswell
Horace Walpole
by Timothy Mowl
Maiden Voyages and Infant Colonies
by
In the 1780s in Britain, two very different places -- Sierra Leone and Botany Bay -- were mooted as possible sites for a penal colony. In the end, Botany Bay won the day and Sierra Leone became instead an experimental self-governing colony for ex-Slaves, the distant flagship of a vigorous popular movement at home against the slave trade. This fully annotated edition of Anna Maria Falconbridge's Two Voyages to Sierra Leone (1794) and Mary Ann Parker's A Voyage Round the World (1795) brings together in one volume the first published accounts by women of these new sites of British colonization. Laying the texts alongside one another brings into illuminating conjunction Britain's concurrent, late eighteenth-century systems of transportation and resettlement, convictism and slavery. Their republication in modern format will also help to focus current debates about the constitution of national, racial and sexual identities and the relationship between imperial and authorial power. Two Voyages to Sierra Leone is a lively and controversial text. Written as a series of letters to an intimate female friend, it is principally concerned to expose the bungling, hypocrisy and greed of an African imperial venture run by some of Britain's leading abolitionists. It is an important text for exploring some of the complexities surrounding women's intervention in the pro and anti-slavery debates of the age. Recently married to a slave-trade surgeon turned passionate abolitionist, Falconbridge charts the demise of her marriage amidst flirtations with the local slave traders and eventual defection from abolitionism. Her pro-slavery position is striking for its alliance with strong anti-colonial andpro-woman views. Mary Ann Parker's account of the first few years of settlement at Port Jackson covers social visiting and picnicking, the unique flora and fauna and observations on many of the colony's leading players. There are some forthright comments on the horrors of transportation and a 'manners and customs' portrait of local aborigines under the rubric 'Observations on the Slave Trade'.
Portrait of a Marriage
by Nigel Nicolson
The Forbidden Best-Sellers of Pre-Revolutionary France
by Robert Darnton
Robert Darnton's work is one of the main reasons that cultural history has become an exciting study central to our understanding of the past. His latest book vibrates with the strange political and literary energies of ancien régime France. "The Forbidden Best-Sellers of Pre-Revolutionary France" traces the merging of philosophical, sexual, and anti-monarchical interests into the pulp fiction of the 1780s, banned books that make fascinating reading more than two centuries later.
|
0 items in cart
Muze Inc. For personal non-commercial use only. All rights reserved. Some content for books is owned by Baker & Taylor, Inc. or its licensors and is subject to copyright and all other protections provided by applicable law.
