Thomas F. Bonnell
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199532209
- eISBN:
- 9780191700996
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199532209.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, 18th-century Literature
This chapter examines Johnson's prefaces and Bell's connected system of biography. Under the connected system of biography, Bell claims that the lives together would form a type of literary history ...
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This chapter examines Johnson's prefaces and Bell's connected system of biography. Under the connected system of biography, Bell claims that the lives together would form a type of literary history enabling readers to evaluate the characteristics of a class of writers in tandem with the products of their creativity. Bell borrowed heavily from sources as shown in Johnson's prefaces. The biographical half of the plagiarized preface was a jigsaw combination of elements from Johnson and Biographia Britannica. Rather than face this formidable legal challenge, Bell cut his losses, and withdrew the offending preface from sale. While Bell acquainted his reader ‘at once with the poet and the man’, his creation lacked a uniform biographical approach and a consistent critical voice. But if the system is taken to mean ‘any combination of many things acting together’, as Johnson defined the term, then Bell's lives fit the bill.Less
This chapter examines Johnson's prefaces and Bell's connected system of biography. Under the connected system of biography, Bell claims that the lives together would form a type of literary history enabling readers to evaluate the characteristics of a class of writers in tandem with the products of their creativity. Bell borrowed heavily from sources as shown in Johnson's prefaces. The biographical half of the plagiarized preface was a jigsaw combination of elements from Johnson and Biographia Britannica. Rather than face this formidable legal challenge, Bell cut his losses, and withdrew the offending preface from sale. While Bell acquainted his reader ‘at once with the poet and the man’, his creation lacked a uniform biographical approach and a consistent critical voice. But if the system is taken to mean ‘any combination of many things acting together’, as Johnson defined the term, then Bell's lives fit the bill.
Lynda Mugglestone
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- September 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780199679904
- eISBN:
- 9780191760099
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199679904.003.0002
- Subject:
- Linguistics, English Language, Lexicography
This chapter traces, in detail, the early history of the Dictionary, and the patterns of direction and redirection which appear between Johnson’s ‘Scheme’ of 1746, the Plan of the following year (and ...
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This chapter traces, in detail, the early history of the Dictionary, and the patterns of direction and redirection which appear between Johnson’s ‘Scheme’ of 1746, the Plan of the following year (and its various iterations), as well as the ‘Preface’ which accompanies the completed Dictionary of 1755, paying particular attention to Johnson’s changing relationship with Lord Chesterfield. ‘The scheme, the plan, and the preface are not consistent, nor do they always clarify the book’, writes Lipking: ‘Each successive stage of making the Dictionary seems to represent a falling away.’ Yet, as this chapter shows, to engage with the dictionary as journey and Johnson’s iterated use of travel as device, can offer a different — and productive — way of approaching this pattern, conceived not as decline but as a process of on-going movement and change.Less
This chapter traces, in detail, the early history of the Dictionary, and the patterns of direction and redirection which appear between Johnson’s ‘Scheme’ of 1746, the Plan of the following year (and its various iterations), as well as the ‘Preface’ which accompanies the completed Dictionary of 1755, paying particular attention to Johnson’s changing relationship with Lord Chesterfield. ‘The scheme, the plan, and the preface are not consistent, nor do they always clarify the book’, writes Lipking: ‘Each successive stage of making the Dictionary seems to represent a falling away.’ Yet, as this chapter shows, to engage with the dictionary as journey and Johnson’s iterated use of travel as device, can offer a different — and productive — way of approaching this pattern, conceived not as decline but as a process of on-going movement and change.
