Samuel Johnson and the Politics of Hanoverian England

ISBN-13: 9780198204527 / Angielski / Twarda / 1994 / 336 str.

John Cannon

Opis

This is a lively and readable reinterpretation of the Georgian political order. Samuel Johnson's life (1709-1784) spans most of the eighteenth cetnury. His contacts in the literary and cultural, scholarly, and political worlds were wide, including Gibbon, Goldsmith, Fox, Burke, Reynolds, Adam Smith, and many others. This book uses Johnson's remarkable career as a point of entry into Hanoverian England. John Cannon explores major contemporary issues, such as education, the poor, capital punishment, the colonies, and Toryism. He challenges many assumptions about Johnson's own attitudes, and offers a substantial modification to the traditional picture of Johnson and the political world of the eighteenth century.

This is a lively new reinterpretation of Georgian political life, by a leading historian of the eighteenth century. Using the career of Samuel Johnson as a point of entry, John Cannon explores major contemporary issues and offers a substantial modification to the traditional picture of Hanoverian England.

Recenzje

One of the most impressive features of Cannon's book is its deft interweaving of close comment on Johnson with wider historical analysis. Cannon's book is the product of a mind steeped in the history and literature of the period. Anyone reading it will benefit from its command both of Johnson's writings and of the wider historical scene, and will be provoked into thought by its underlying theme that eighteenth-century England can plausibly be described as 'Johnson's England'.

O autorze

John Cannon is the author of numerous books, amongst them The Oxford Illustrated History of the British Monarchy (1988) The Fox-North Coalition (CUP, 1970), Parliamentary Reform 1640-1832 (CUP, 1973), Aristocratic Century (CUP, 1984) and as editor Blackwell Dictionary of Historians (Blackwell, 1988).