Community and Solitude: New Essays on Johnson’s Circle (Transits: Literature, Thought & Culture 1650-1850)

Samuel Johnson’s life was situated within a rich social and intellectual community of friendships—and antagonisms. __Community and Solitude__ is a collection of ten essays that explores relationships between Johnson and several of his main contemporaries—including James Boswell, Edmund Burke, Frances Burney, Robert Chambers, Oliver Goldsmith, Bennet Langton, Arthur Murphy, Richard Savage, Anna Seward, and Thomas Warton—and analyzes some of the literary productions emanating from the pressures within those relationships. In their detailed and careful examination of particular works situated within complex social and personal contexts, the essays in this volume offer a “thick” and illuminating description of Johnson’s world that also engages with larger cultural and aesthetic issues, such as intertextuality, literary celebrity, narrative, the nature of criticism, race, slavery, and sensibility. __Contributors__: Christopher Catanese, James Caudle, Marilyn Francus, Christine Jackson-Holzberg, Claudia Thomas Kairoff, Elizabeth Lambert, Anthony W. Lee, James E. May, John Radner, and Lance Wilcox. Published by Bucknell University Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press. "Due in no small part to his aversion to solitude, Samuel Johnson's life was situated within a rich social and intellectual community of friendships--and antagonisms. Community and Solitude is a collection of ten essays that explores relationships between Johnson and several of his main contemporaries--including James Boswell, Edmund Burke, Frances Burney, Robert Chambers, Oliver Goldsmith, Bennet Langton, Arthur Murphy, Richard Savage, Anna Seward, and Thomas Warton--and analyzes some of the literary productions emanating from the pressures within those relationships. In their detailed and careful examination of particular works situated within complex social and personal contexts, the essays in this volume offer a 'thick' and illuminating description of Johnson's world that also engages with larger cultural and aesthetic issues, such as intertextuality, literary celebrity, narrative, the nature of criticism, race, slavery, and sensibility. These essays are thoroughly researched and written in a lively and intelligent way; Anthony Lee's Introduction offers a coherent account of the importance of community and solitude in Johnson's intellectual world. The reader will find that world presented by Community and Solitude in engaging, new ways. Contributors: Christopher Catanese, James Caudle, Marilyn Francus, Christine Jackson-Holzberg, Claudia Thomas Kairoff, Elizabeth Lambert, Anthony W. Lee, James E. May, John Radner, and Lance Wilcox"-- Provided by publisher Cover Title Page Copyright Dedication Contents Abbreviations Introduction Part One: Personal Relationships: Letters and Conversation 1. Connecting with Three “Young Dogs”: Johnson’s Early Letters to Robert Chambers, Bennet Langton, and James Boswell 2. James Elphinston and Samuel Johnson: Contact, Irritations, and an “Argonautic” Letter 3. The Case of the Missing Hottentot: John Dun’s Conversation with Samuel Johnson in Tour to the Hebrides as Reported by Boswell and Dun Part Two: Literary Relationships: Major Texts and Topics 4. Oliver Goldsmith’s Revisions to The Traveller 5. “Down with Her, Burney!”: Johnson, Burney, and the Politics of Literary Celebrity 6. In the First Circle: The Four Narrators of the Life of Savage 7. “Under the Shade of Exalted Merit”: Arthur Murphy’s A Poetical Epistle to Mr. Samuel Johnson, A.M 8. Johnson, Burke, Boswell, and the Slavery Debate 9. Samuel Johnson and Anna Seward: Solitude and Sensibility 10. Johnson, Warton, and the Popular Reader Acknowledgments Bibliography About the Contributors Index