The Lives of the Poets (Masterplots, Revised Second Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Samuel Johnson
- First Published: 1779
- Type of Work: Biography and literary criticism
- Genres: Criticism, Nonfiction, Biography
- Subjects: Authors or writers, Literature, Poetry or poets, Writing, England or English people, Eighteenth century, Seventeenth century, Human behavior
Critical Evaluation:
The essays contained in Samuel Johnson’s The Lives of the Poets were composed as prefaces to a large collection of the works of English writers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and they are therefore primarily critical rather than biographical. Johnson related the known information about the lives of his subjects, but he was content to rely upon facts gathered by earlier biographers, reserving his original thoughts for his critical commentary.
The more than fifty essays vary greatly in both length and detail. Johnson wrote...
[The entire page is 1904 words long]
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