The Letters of Samuel Johnson, Volume V: Appendices & Comprehensive Index
The Plashing Vole (Free subscription) | yesterday
I meant to post this essay on essays by Zadie Smith a couple of weeks ago, to give a sense of perspective to my students slaving over essays - particularly the first-years who may not quite see the point. Essays are creative works: they draw your attention to, then trace the development of, interesting features of texts, ones which people may not have noticed. Meaning, we say, is created in the space...
Cultural Offering.com (Free subscription) | 11/29/2009
The Spectator has asked contributors for some of the best and worst books to consider as Christmas gifts . Some of the intriguing good books listed: Lustrum - Robert Harris - the second in a trilogy of historical fiction about Cicero. Reading Chekhov - Janet Malcolm - New Yorker writer reflects on the writing on Anton Chekhov. Samuel Johnson: A Life - David Nokes - A well-reviewed biography of Johnson...
Brit Lit Blogs (Free subscription) | 11/28/2009
Samuel Johnson's definition of "the essay" is a good way for Zadie Smith to begin. She uses it in an introduction to her new book of essays. The opposition presented is between the well-made work and the messy real: one being unreal and anaemic, the other being full of life's "truthiness" – itself a messy word – which Johnson's quotation reveals was once applied to the...
Ask Nicola (Free subscription) | 11/24/2009
Zadie Smith talks about the essay in the Guardian : For Samuel Johnson in 1755 it is: "A loose sally of the mind; an irregular undigested piece; not a regularly and orderly composition." And if this looks to us like one of Johnson's lexical eccentricities, we're chastened to find Joseph Addison, of all people, in agreement ("The wildness of these compositions that go by the name of essays")...
Mid-Atlantic English (Free subscription) | 11/22/2009
Mid-Atlantic English's second run-up-to-Christmas competition! The prize this week is an Emma Bridgewater Truly Great tin, complete with a packet of biscuits. Biscuits not shown because you will have to specify: Plain Digestives , Chocolate Digestives , HobNobs , Rich Tea biscuits or Jaffa Cakes . The tin measures 20cm x 16cm or approx 8" x 6.5". I have one and I love it--I use if for storing...
The Guardian (Free subscription) | 11/21/2009
Suffering from 'novel nausea', Zadie Smith wonders if the essay lives up to its promise Why do novelists write essays? Most publishers would rather have a novel. Bookshops don't know where to put them. It's a rare reader who seeks them out with any sense of urgency. Still, in recent months Jonathan Safran Foer, Margaret Drabble, Chinua Achebe and Michael Chabon, among others, have published essays,...
You Don't Say (Free subscription) | 11/18/2009
Let’s suppose you are an aspirant to the Priesthood of All Grammarians. You will, of course, have the sacred texts, MWDEU , Garner on Usage, perhaps First Fowler and Second Fowler (also known as the Revised Standard Fowler). But you will also be in need of a breviary for your daily devotions. Now there is one. Mignon Fogarty, whom you may already know as Grammar Girl , has just published The...
Maud Newton (Free subscription) | 11/09/2009
Harold Bloom says Samuel Johnson, who identified with Falstaff, himself seems like a character from Shakespeare.
The Wooden Spoon (Free subscription) | 11/07/2009
Harold Bloom has a review at The New York Times on the new biography of Samuel Johnson: 'Johnson, at 26, arrived in London without money and with only his more than considerable wit, learning, judgment and astonishing energy. He worked at literary odd jobs and only gradually raised himself out of Grub Street. Breakthrough commenced with “A Dictionary of the English Language” (1755), after...
New York Times (Free subscription) | 11/06/2009
A valuable new biography of Samuel Johnson, the most eminent of all literary critics.
New York Times (Free subscription) | 11/06/2009
A valuable new biography of Samuel Johnson, the most eminent of all literary critics.
MY HAPPY ENDING (Free subscription) | 11/06/2009
When Insults Had Class These insults are from an era before the English language got boiled down to 4-letter words. ^ I found these posted on facebook. Quite interesting, since I'm learning about most of these people in history ATM! "He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire." - Winston Churchill "I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with...
Word Wenches (Free subscription) | 11/02/2009
By Nicola "The roads are neither rough nor dirty; and it affords a southern stranger a new kind of pleasure to travel so commodiously without the interruption of toll-gates. The carriages in common use are small carts, drawn each by one little horse; and a man seems to derive some degree of dignity and importance from the reputation of possessing a two-horse cart." So wrote James Boswell...
Anecdotal Evidence (Free subscription) | 10/30/2009
“I think that education in the higher things today is largely a matter of private enterprise.” That certainly has been my experience. I’m aware of the dangers of autodidacticism, comparable to serving as one’s own attorney in criminal matters, but I earned a college degree 33 years after I matriculated, mostly out of orneriness, and spent most of the intervening years reading...
Reading matters (Free subscription) | 10/22/2009
BBC Radio 4 is carrying out an interesting exercise as part of its Open Book programme. It asked 10 British/Irish authors to nominate the books that they "feel most deserve to be re-read and reinstated onto our bookshelves". The list of neglected books, which is being discussed on radio, looks like this: William Boyd nominated The Polyglots by William Gerhardie Susan Hill nominated The Rector's...
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