Biography

Seager, Nicholas

Abstract

This chapter surveys Samuel Johnson’s career as a biographer, exploring tensions between the ideals of life-writing he propounded in essays and conversations and his evolving practice from the 1730s to the 1780s. The chapter outlines three phases in Johnson’s development as a biographer. First, it shows how his increasingly complex moral treatment of subjects in his earliest biographies challenged extant models of writing lives either to be imitated or censured. Second, it turns to his middle years to explore the conjunctions and divergences between Johnson’s influential theories of biography and his comparatively underwhelming output. Finally, it interprets the career-topping Lives of the Poets (1779–81) as to some extent an enactment of Johnson’s precepts for life-writing and to some extent an acknowledgment that his ideals needed to be modified to reconcile compassion with rigor.

Citation

Seager, N. (2022). Biography. In J. Lynch (Ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Samuel Johnson (260–278). Oxford University Press (OUP). https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198794660.013.16

• Acceptance Date: May 1, 2022
• Online Publication Date: Oct 20, 2022
• Publication Date: Sep 22, 2022
• Deposit Date: May 31, 2023
• Publisher: Oxford University Press (OUP)
• Pages: 260–278
• Series Title: Oxford Handbooks
• Book Title: The Oxford Handbook of Samuel Johnson
• Chapter Number: 15
• ISBN: 9780198794660
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198794660.013.16
• Keywords: Samuel Johnson, eighteenth century, biography, life-writing, criticism, Richard Savage
• Related Public URLs: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-oxford-handbook-of-samuel-johnson-9780198794660?cc=gb&lang=en&; ; https://academic.oup.com/edited-volume/44602