The Enduring Work of Biography seeks to revitalize appreciation of Boswell’s great biography for a new generation of scholars, students, and general readers. Engaging accessibly and informatively with biographical, historical, critical, and textual matters and drawing on the Yale Edition of the Private Papers of James Boswell, Enduring Work discusses Boswell’s collaboration with others (both alive and dead) in researching, writing, revising, proofing, publishing, and promoting his biography of Johnson. Central to Boswell’s concept of life writing is memory, and Enduring Work highlights both its dynamic and collaborative force in the Life of Johnson. This collection is book-ended by an introduction that considers the critical reception of the Life of Johnson and an epilogue that suggests its continuing critical insight and relevance. A closing chapter and two appendixes survey the history of the Life of Johnson as a best-selling book for over two centuries, an extraordinary collaboration between readers and publishers and between Boswell and Johnson themselves that is still evolving.
Frontispiece Abbreviations Illustrations
Introduction: Enduring Boswell, Greg Clingham
1. Authenticity and Co-Authorship in Boswell’s Life-Writing, Thomas F. Bonnell 2. Sir William Forbes of Pitsligo and Boswell’s Life of Johnson, Richard B. Sher 3. Gist and Jest: Boswell’s Memory and Johnson’s Conversation Revisited, Jacob Sider Jost 4. Speech and Prayer in Boswell’s Life of Johnson, Charlotte Roberts 5. On Quotation and the Consolations of Biography, Gordon Turnbull 6. Travel Writing and Boswell’s Biographical Acts of Union, Shirley F. Tung 7. Editions and Abridgements of Boswell’s Life of Johnson: A Short History, Paul Tankard
Epilogue: Loving Boswell, Greg Clingham Appendix 1: Boswell’s Life of Johnson: 1791-2008: A Concise Listing of Editions and Printings, Paul Tankard Appendix 2: The Life of Johnson: Extracts and Abridgements, Paul Tankard
Bibliography Contributors Index
GREG CLINGHAM is a British literary scholar and publisher. He was Professor of English at Bucknell University, where he held the NEH Chair in the Humanities and the John P. Crozer Chair of English Literature, and was, for twenty-three years, the director of Bucknell University Press.
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