The Lives
The Lives, which were critical as well as biographical studies, appeared as prefaces to selections of each poet's work, and they were quite larger than originally expected. As Johnson justified in the advertisement for the work, "my purpose was only to have allotted to every Poet an Advertisement, like those which we find in the French Miscellanies, containing a few dates and a general character." However, he did not limit himself to a dry series of dates and biography, but created a series of Lives with, according to his 1783 edition Preface, "the honest intention of giving pleasure".
Read more about this topic: Lives Of The Most Eminent English Poets
Famous quotes containing the word lives:
“The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“Women cannot claim the right to be considered mature and responsible until they decide the course of their lives for themselves and refuse to be a “manipulated group.” They will not be truly emancipated until ... the right to work is a matter of course and not of discussion.”
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)