James Beattie (1735-1803) was a key figure in the Scottish Enlightenment. He was a popular philosophical opponent of David Hume, and through his famous poem, The Minstrel, he had a lasting influence on Wordsworth and the Romantics. Beattie lived among the great literati of the time, and his wide correspondence provides a treasure trove of information about his contemporaries.
Draws upon letters, diaries, memoirs, book reviews, and newspaper articles to present a picture of James Boswell from the vantage point of those who knew him best. This book tells what family, friends, rivals, critics, and satirists thought of the man who produced notable works.
The life of this actor, manager, playwright, and eighteenth-century gentleman is here refracted through the volurninous correspondence and analyses of roles, plays, and performances in this, no doubt final, biography of David Garrick. As the direct result of modern scholarship accessible only since the 1960s, it is now possible to appraise fully the life of this remarkable person who was born in Lichfield 19February 1717, a childhood friend of Samuel Johnson, who became the greatest English theatrical luminary who ever lived, and who when he died 20 January 1779was mourned by the nation and eulogized by Dr. Johnson as one whose death "eclipsed the gaiety of nations." For twenty-nine years (1747-1776) Garrick managed Drury Lane theatre, caring passionately for its well-being. His own acting set the pace for the performances, his discipline carried it on, and his theatrical innovations attracted the audiences on which the lives, hopes, and families of some 140actors, actresses, singers, dancers, and others depended. In addition, he wrote, adapted, or altered some 49 plays and wrote nearly 100 prologues. What emerges from this big, new critical biography is a fully drawn portrait of an eighteenth-century gentleman, with a wide range of acquaintances, elegant socially, morally, and personally, and an engaging conversationalist with and respecter of women of mark and with his closest friends. He was also, as the evidence now shows, the solid link with his own age and the great dramatic artists of the past, from the Restoration playwrights to Massinger, Jonson, Shakespeare, and early English dramatists.
The Hyde Edition offers scores of texts transcribed for the first time from the original documents a feature of special importance in the case of Johnson's revealing letters to Hester Thrale, many of which have been available only in expurgated form. The Hyde Edition is also the first systematically to record substantive deletions, which can yield intimate knowledge of Johnson's stylistic procedures, mental habits, and chains of association. Furthermore, its 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 postwar Johnsonian scholarship, as well as decoding references that had previously resisted explanation. The result is a far richer understanding of Samuel Johnson's life, work, and milieu. Originally published in 1992. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
How is it that we feel with fictional characters and so approve or disapprove of their actions? For many British Enlightenment thinkers writing at a time when sympathy was the pivot of ethics as well as poetics, this question was crucial. Asserting that the notion of the sympathetic imagination prominent in Romantic criticism and poetry originates in Moral Sentimentalism, this study traces the emergence of what became a key concept of intersubjectivity. It shows how, contrary to earlier traditions, Francis Hutcheson and his disciples successively established the imagination rather than reason as the pivotal faculty through which sympathy is rendered morally effective. Writing at the interface of ethics and poetics, Adam Smith, Lord Kames and others explored the sympathetic imagination as a means of both explaining emotional reader response and discovering moral distinctions. As a result, the sentimental novel became the sight of ethical controversy. Arguing against the dominant view of research which claims that the novel of sensibility is mostly uncritically sentimental, the book demonstrates that it is precisely in this genre that the sympathetic imagination is sceptically assessed in terms of its literary and moral potential.
Reading 1759 investigates the literary culture of a remarkable year in British and French history, writing, and ideas. Familiar to many as the British "year of victories" during the Seven Years' War, 1759 was also an important year in the histories of fiction, philosophy, ethics, and aesthetics. Reading 1759 is the first book to examine together the range of works written and published during this crucial year. Offering broad coverage of the year's work in writing, these essays examine key works by Johnson, Voltaire, Sterne, Adam Smith, Edward Young, Sarah Fielding, and Christopher Smart, along with such group projects as the Encyclop die and the literary review journals of the mid-eighteenth century. Organized around a cluster of key topics, the volume reflects the concerns most important to writers themselves in 1759. This was a year of the new and the modern, as writers addressed current issues of empire and ethical conduct, forged new forms of creative expression, and grappled with the nature of originality itself. Texts written and published in 1759 confronted the history of Western colonialism, the problem of prostitution in a civilized society, and the limitations of linguistic expression. Philosophical issues were also important in 1759, not least the thorny question of causation; while, in France, state censorship challenged the Encyclop die, the central Enlightenment project. Taking into its purview such texts and intellectual developments, Reading 1759 puts the literary culture of this singular, and singularly important, year on the scholarly map. In the process, the volume also provides a self-reflective contribution to the growing body of "annualized" studies that focus on the literary output of specific years.
Samuel Johnson, from early boyhood, lived with the knowledge that his homely face, large and ungainly body, loud voice, and odd mannerisms put people off. He later confessed that he had never made an effort to please others until past thirty, “considering the matter as hopeless.” Yet he managed to gather about him as friends, especially during the last quarter of his life, some of the most fascinating and accomplished people of the day. These friendships were not always smooth, and some did not last, but Johnson valued the individuals nonetheless. Actor, painter, playwright, novelist, Greek scholar, miscellaneous writer, biographer, leading bluestocking, wealthy man-of-fashion: they represented a wide range of talents and personalities. Johnson brought them together as a group, and all testified that in knowing him they became far better persons than they otherwise would have been. This book focuses on ten key figures, aside from Johnson himself, of the so-called Johnson circle. It explores their characters, their contributions to society, their relationships with one another, and their indebtedness to Samuel Johnson.
