The Politics of Samuel Johnson - Paperback

by Donald Greene (Author)

First published in 1960, The Politics of Samuel Johnson remains one of the most significant studies of Johnson ever written. Contrary to virtually all preceding studies of Johnson's life, politics, and art, Donald Greene declared that the popular image of Johnson--one that even pervaded academic circles--was a caricature, an amalgam of misconceptions, inaccuracies, and sometimes deliberate untruths drawn from the works of his well-intentioned friend Boswell and his detractor Macaulay.In the Introduction to the second edition, Greene reasserts--in light of three decades of Johnsonian scholarship--his attack on the stereotyping of Johnson as a bigoted, party-line Tory and a crypto-Jacobite. Utilizing new material such as Thomas Curley's edition of the Chambers/Johnson Vinerian law lectures and the sale catalogue to Johnson's library to support his argument, Greene also warns that Johnson is still misquoted and misunderstood in situations from classroom lectures to discussions of Britain's role in the 1982 Falklands War.

Author Biography

Donald Greene is the Leo S. Bing Professor of English Emeritus at the University of Southern California. He has served as editor of several volumes of Johnson's writings and, along with James L. Clifford and John A. Vance, has compiled bibliographies of Johnsonian studies. Among his earlier books is "The Age of Exuberance: Backgrounds to Eighteenth-Century English Literature."