London (Masterplots II: Poetry, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Samuel Johnson
- First Published: 1738
- Type of Work: Satire
- Genres: Satire, Poetry
- Subjects: Crime or criminals, Sin or Original sin, Poverty or poor people, England or English people, Eighteenth century, City life, London, Greek or Roman times, Rome
The Poem
London (the full title is London: A Poem in Imitation of the Third Satire of Juvenal) is a long poem of 263 lines written in heroic couplets. Samuel Johnson’s first important writing and his second-greatest poem (after “The Vanity of Human Wishes”), this literary imitation of Juvenal’s Satire III (part of Juvenal’s Satires, from the second century c.e.) is neither a translation nor a paraphrase of the original. It is a genuinely new and vigorous composition about corrupt eighteenth century London, “part of the beauty of the...
[The entire page is 1814 words long]
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