Samuel Johnson

Network Licence for the CD-ROM of the famous dictionary of Samuel Johnson, published in London in 1755.

The Letters of Samuel Johnson, known as the Hyde Edition, is the most complete scholarly edition of Johnsons's letters ever to appear. In editing these five volumes, Bruce Redford has included fifty-two newly discovered letters or parts of letters, and he has supplied more accurate versions of many others. Redford also has decoded numerous references that previously had resisted explanation, and his annotations integrate the vital discoveries of recent scholarship. The overall result is a far richer understanding of Samuel Johnson's life, work, and milieu. The Hyde Edition offers major professional advances over all previous publication of these materials. It transcribes scores of texts from the original documents for the first time - a feature of special importance in the case of Johnson's revealing letters to Hester Thrale, a number of which have been available only in expurgated form. It is the first edition systematically to record substantive deletions in a way that will allow readers a more intimate knowledge of stylistic procedures, mental habits, and chains of association. The Hyde Edition also documents the current disposition of the manuscripts, hundreds of which have changed hands in recent decades. Volume IV chronicles the last three years of Johnson's life, a period of protracted struggle against a variety of ailments and of heroic commitment to preserving a sound mind in a radically unsound body. This epistolary endgame includes the breakup of the friendship with Hester Thrale, medical dramas of every description, and a poignant reaching out to new friends and new experiences. The letters of 1782-84 exemplify in abundance what Johnson himself praises and provides, 'the interchange of that social officiousness by which we are habitually endeared to one another."

This is the first scholarly edition of Johnson's letters to appear for forty years. It presents new letters, more accurate texts, and more up-to-date annotation than its predecessors. Fifty-two previously unknown letters or parts of letters have come to light since R. W. Chapman's edition (Oxford, 1952). Such `new' letters, however, are scarcely more important than those for which only inferior printed texts or copies of varying reliability have previously been available. This edition offers scores of texts transcribed for the first time from the original documents - a statistic of special importance in the case of Johnson's revealing letters to Hester Thrale, many of which have only been known in expurgated form. For the first time, substantive deletions are recorded, yielding intimate knowledge of Johnson's stylistic procedures, mental habits, and chains of association. Furthermore, detailed ownership credits document the current disposition of the manuscripts, hundreds of which have changed hands during the last four decades. Finally, the annotation of the letters incorporates the many significant discoveries of post-war Johnsonian scholarship, as well as decoding references that had resisted explanation before. The result is a more accurate and more comprehensive understanding of Samuel Johnson, man of letters.

"The Letters of Samuel Johnson" contains 52 previously unknown letters or parts of letters which have come to light since R. W. Chapman's work on the subject, published in 1952. For the first time, substantive deletions are recorded, yielding intimate knowledge of Johnson's stylistic procedures, mental habits and chains of association. Furthermore, detailed ownership credits document the current disposition of the manuscripts, hundreds of which have changed hands during the last four decades. Finally, the annotation of the letters incorporates the many significant discoveries of post-war Johnsonian scholarship, as well as decoding references that had resisted explanation before.

"The Letters of Samuel Johnson" contains 52 previously unknown letters or parts of letters which have come to light since R. W. Chapman's work on the subject, published in 1952. For the first time, substantive deletions are recorded, yielding intimate knowledge of Johnson's stylistic procedures, mental habits and chains of association. Furthermore, detailed ownership credits document the current disposition of the manuscripts, hundreds of which have changed hands during the last four decades. Finally, the annotation of the letters incorporates the many significant discoveries of post-war Johnsonian scholarship, as well as decoding references that had resisted explanation before.

A new standard edition for three works by Samuel Johnson: Rasselas, “The Vision of Theodore,” and “The Fountains” This volume brings together three of Johnson’s longest fictional pieces, showing the unusual similarities in some of their main themes and emphases. Rasselas, a philosophical tale that embodies the full range of Johnson’s thinking on moral, psychological, and literary matters, has been described as central to an understanding of Johnson and his age. “The Vision of Theodore,” a moral allegory, and “The Fountains,” a fairy tale, demonstrate the variety of Johnson’s narrative skills. The three works are introduced and annotated by Gwin J. Kolb, an authority on Rasselas. The introductions set the scene surrounding the creation and printing of the texts and cover a wider range of topics than has been addressed in previous editions. And the historical notes, which concentrate on clarifying the meaning of numerous words, comprise the largest body of glosses that has ever accompanied the three pieces. The textual notes provide a record of Johnson’s revisions of Rasselas and of Mrs. Piozzi’s manuscript transcription of “The Fountains.” This book will be the standard edition of these notable works.

A scholarly edition of a work by Samuel Johnson. The edition presents an authoritative text, together with an introduction, commentary notes, and scholarly apparatus.

Book by Samuel Johnson, published in 1775. The Journey was the result of a three-month trip to Scotland that Johnson took with James Boswell in 1773. It contains Johnson's descriptions of the customs, religion, education, trade, and agriculture of a society that was new to him. The account in Boswell's diary, published after Johnson's death as The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, with Samuel Johnson, LL. D. (1785), offers an intimate personal record of Johnson's behavior and conversation during the trip.

The surviving sermons of Samuel Johnson, presented in a scholarly edition for the first time It has been known since the publication of pre-Boswellian biographies that Samuel Johnson wrote sermons that were preached by others. The twenty-eight that have survived are presented here in their first scholarly edition, with full explanations and textual notes. They include a hitherto unpublished manuscript sermon and the celebrated Convict’s Address to His Unhappy Brethren, written for the notorious forger Dr. William Dodd for delivery to his fellow prisoners on the eve of his execution at Newgate. In the sermons one finds the famous Johnsonian rhetoric and logic applied to such subjects as marriage and friendship, the meaning of moral and physical evil, the need to adjust punishment so that it fits the crime, and the desirability of tradition in religion. Equally eloquent are Johnson’s indignant and fiery attacks on intellectual pride, “the vanity of human wishes,” perjury, defamation, fraud, skepticism, and infidelity. In their introduction, the editors discuss the circumstances surrounding the composition, preaching, and publication of the sermons. Certain to interest students of Johnson’s thought, this volume should also appeal to those concerned with the development of English style and with the venerable and once admired English homiletical tradition.

An ample and varied section of accessible essays by Samuel Johnson This selection of the cream of the writing from volumes II to V of the Yale Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson fills the largest remaining gap in easily available eighteenth-century texts for the student and general reader. The edition provides in popular form the amplest selection available of Johnson’s essays, ranging from his great moral pieces to the valuable essays on literary criticisms. The text is that of the authoritative Yale Edition and includes full annotation. An introduction by W. J. Bate provides a concise summary of the publication history of the essays and probes in detail the moral vision that pervades most of them.

A scholarly edition of the poems of Samuel Johnson. The edition presents an authoritative text, together with an introduction, commentary notes, and scholarly apparatus.

Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

Autobiographical writings, including a previously unpublished diary, comprise first volume of Works of Samuel Johnson Although Samuel Johnson is recognized as the central English literary figure of the second half of the eighteenth century, and the period is often referred to as the Age of Johnson, no consequential edition of his works has appeared since 1825, and no edition at any time has exercised the care in presenting the complete and accurate text of his works that modern readers require. Now, Yale University is sponsoring a new edition of the works of Samuel Johnson, to include writings identified as his during the last twenty-five years and not printed in any previous collection of his works. The complete Yale edition is expected to occupy at least twelve volumes. It will be guided by a distinguished committee made up of Herman W. Liebert (Yale) as chairman; Allen T. Hazen (Columbia) as general editor; Robert F. Metzdorf (Yale) as secretary; Walter J. Bate (Harvard); Bertrand H. Bronson (California); R. W. Chapman (Oxford); James L. Clifford (Columbia); Robert Halsband (Hunter); Frederick W. Hilles (Yale); Arthur A. Houghton, Jr., of New York City; Mr. and Mrs. Donald F. Hyde, of Somerville, N. J.; William R. Keast (Cornell); Edward L. McAdam, Jr. (New York); L. F. Powell (Oxford); S. C. Roberts (Cambridge); and D. Nichol Smith (Oxford). The inaugural volume in The Works of Samuel Johnson prints, for the first time completely and together, all of his autobiographical writings, including an unpublished diary for 1765–84, the longest and fullest of any of Johnson’s diaries now known. Here are Johnson’s own records of day-to-day events, of his mental process and spiritual life, of his readings, his travels, and his physical condition presented in chronological succession. The editors have provided an extensive running commentary that illuminates and interprets Johnson’s account and constitutes a continuing narrative based on other sources and on detailed original research.