No one can read this book without learning a great deal about practices of reading and how they change from one age to the next.'--Lawrence Lipking, Northwestern University

In this groundbreaking portrait of Samuel Johnson, Nokes positions the great thinker in his rightful place as an active force in the Enlightenment, not a mere recorder or performer, and demonstrates how his interaction with life impacted ...

In this moving biography, Peter Martin assesses Boswell's literary achievements and uncovers the pulsating and dynamic world he thrived in, from the royal courts and the drawing rooms of fashionable ladies and gentlemen to the fleshpots of ...

Prize-winning biographer Leo Damrosch tells the story of “the Club,” a group of extraordinary writers, artists, and thinkers who gathered weekly at a London tavern In 1763, the painter Joshua Reynolds proposed to his friend Samuel ...

In this study, Hal Gladfelder combines groundbreaking archival research into Cleland’s tumultuous life with incisive readings of his sometimes extravagant, sometimes perverse body of work, positioning him as a central figure in the ...

Edinburgh-born James Boswell, at twenty-two, kept a daily diary of his eventful second stay in London from 1762 to 1763.

This compelling book chronicles a young boy’s journey from the horrors of Jamaican slavery to the heart of London’s literary world, and reveals the unlikely friendship that changed his life.

The author of the masterly volumes Intellectuals, Creators, and Heroes returns with a collection of biographical portraits of the greatest humorists and wits in history.

Samuel Johnson. cannot rejoice , except the righteous are in author- ity ; " that no publick prosperity , or private quiet , can be hoped for , but from the justice and wisdom of those , to whom the administration of affairs , and the ...

... Johnson's Lives , just as the age became the Age of Johnson . He had shaped the profession of letters in his ... in author's rights and copyright law . But law did not settle the touchy question of how to define an author . As 52 ...