Böcker av Samuel Johnson

The Lives of the Poets is one of the greatest works of English criticism, but also one of the most diverting. This is the only one-volume paperback edition to make available Johnson's most substantial Lives in unabridged form. Texts are drawn from Roger Lonsdale's authoritative complete edition, and introduced by John Mullan.

The eighteenth century produced a remarkable array of thinkers whose influence in the development of free societies and free institutions is incalculable. Among these thinkers were Mandeville, Hutcheson, Smith, Hume, and Burke. And their time is known as the Age of Johnson. Samuel Johnson: Political Writings contains twenty-four of Johnson''s essays on the great social, economic, and political issues of his time. These include ''Taxation No Tyranny'' -- in which Johnson defended the British Crown against the American revolutionaries -- and ''An Introduction to the Political State of Great Britain'', ''Thoughts on the Coronation of King George III'', and ''The Patriot'', which is one of Johnson''s principal writings during the American Revolution.

Samuel Johnson's Dictionary, published in 1755, marked a milestone in a language in desperate need of standards. No English dictionary before it had devoted so much space to everyday words, been so thorough in its definitions, or illustrated usage by quoting from Shakespeare and other great writers. Johnson's was the dictionary used by Jane Austen and Charles Dickens, Wordsworth and Coleridge, the Bront s and the Brownings, Thomas Hardy and Oscar Wilde. This new edition, edited by David Crystal, will contain a selection from the original, offering memorable passages on subjects ranging from books and critics to dreams and ethics.

When James Boswell persuaded Samuel Johnson to embark on a tour of Boswell's native Scotland in 1773, the adventure resulted in two magnificent books, Johnson's Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland and Boswell'sJournal of a Tour to the Hebrides.

This edition makes available for the first time the largest collection of unpublished material by the great eighteenth-century writer and lexicographer Samuel Johnson in existence. Johnson's corrections and amendments to his Dictionary, constituting a revision never printed, are reproduced here in facsimile, with a transcription, an extensive commentary and notes.

Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia, leaves the easy life of the Happy Valley, accompanied by his sister Nekayah, her attendant Pekuah, and the much-travelled philosopher Imlac. Their journey takes them to Egypt, where they study the various conditions of men's lives, before returning home in a 'conclusion in which nothing is concluded'. Johnson's tale is not only a satire on optimism, but also an expression of truth about the human mind and its infinite capacity for hope.