Dr Johnsons Dictionary Of Modern Life

Author : Henry Hitchings
Publisher : Macmillan
ISBN 13 : 1760780669
Total Pages : 320 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (67 download)

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Download or read book The World in Thirty-Eight Chapters or Dr Johnson’s Guide to Life written by Henry Hitchings and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2018-06-12 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Samuel Johnson was a critic, an essayist, a poet and a biographer. He was also, famously, the compiler of the first good English dictionary, published in 1755. A polymath and a great conversationalist, his intellectual and social curiosity were boundless. Yet he was a deeply melancholy man, haunted by dark thoughts, sickness and a diseased imagination. In his own life, both public and private, he sought to choose a virtuous and prudent path, negotiating everyday hazards and temptations. His writings and aphorisms illuminate what it means to lead a life of integrity, and his experience, abundantly documented by him and by others (such as James Boswell and Hester Thrale), is a lesson in the art of regulating the mind and the body. Johnson’s story touches on many themes that have enduring significance. He was, and remains, a perceptive commentator on the vanity of human wishes, the rewards and dangers of charity, the need to cultivate kindness, the complexities of family life (especially marriage), the effects of boredom and the fleeting nature of pleasure. He writes and speaks incisively and humanely about the ego, ambition, hypocrisy, fallibility and disorders of the mind, as well as the corrosive effects of obsession, the precariousness of fame and the skulduggery of the literary world. He is a source of profound good sense about what it means to teach, read, write and travel. More than that, though, he continually translates his experience of poverty, scorn, pain and madness into a rich understanding of how to be.