Customer Reviews

Lives of the English Poets (Everyman's Library) (v. 1)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Samuel Johnson finished an illustrious literary career with a series of biographies of the major English poets up until his time. The series was initiated by bookpublishers, who were interested in preserving their copyrights by publishing new editions of each poet's works, with Johnson's prefaces. Eventually, the prefaces themselves were collected and printed separately from the poems.

Johnson's effort was an attempt at establishing a canon for his day, and he hoped forever. Nowadays, we do not read all of these poets with the same enthusiasm that Johnson did, but his analyses of Milton, Pope, Dryden et al are frequently read to this day. His criticism is outstanding, and the attention which he brings to each poet will make you think twice before disregarding poets we have now forgotten.

This specific edition is a reprint of the 1905 Oxford edition, edited by George Birkbeck Hill. Hill's editorial work on Boswell's Life Of Johnson is the edition typically cited in later works (any footnote citing a six volume Boswell is referring to Hill's effort) and his Johnson Miscellanies is a favorite collection of contemporaneous recollections of Johnson. He brings similar value to this edition of "The Lives Of The Poets." At least until such time as the Yale Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson publishes The Lives Of The Poets, this will *remain* the standard edition.

The fifty- two lives written about were taken by Johnson to represent the best of English poetry. His prejudices express themselves often, and he makes egregious errors, for instance in panning Milton's Lycidas. But Johnson is a powerful figure often insightful , and usually interesting. The lives have been superseded in a basic sense by longer more scholarly studies, but they still have their readers, largely I expect, among graduate students of English literature.

One poet reviewed in this book is Savage. He was a contemporary of Johnson. His career went from bad to worse. He spent too much time in coffee shops and not enough time writing. His friends supported him financially. It is an interesting story; it rings true; you could imagine someone nowadays writing a similiar life of say Jimi Hendrix.