Walter Jackson Bate (1918–1999)
Auteur van Samuel Johnson
Over de Auteur
Fotografie: New York World-Telegram and the Sun Newspaper Photograph Collection (Library of Congress).
Werken van Walter Jackson Bate
Thomas Hardy : Twentieth Century Views : A Collection of Critical Essays (1962) — Redacteur — 2 exemplaren
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Tagged
Algemene kennis
- Officiële naam
- Bate, Walter Jackson
- Geboortedatum
- 1918-05-23
- Overlijdensdatum
- 1999-07-26
- Geslacht
- male
- Nationaliteit
- USA
- Geboorteplaats
- Mankato, Minnesota, USA
- Plaats van overlijden
- Boston, Massachusetts, USA
- Woonplaatsen
- Boston, Massachusetts, USA
- Opleiding
- Harvard University
- Beroepen
- literary critic
biographer - Organisaties
- Harvard University
- Prijzen en onderscheidingen
- Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1957)
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Besprekingen
Lijsten
Prijzen
Misschien vindt je deze ook leuk
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Statistieken
- Werken
- 14
- Ook door
- 4
- Leden
- 1,059
- Populariteit
- #24,318
- Waardering
- 4.2
- Besprekingen
- 10
- ISBNs
- 39
- Favoriet
- 3
Among his remarkable achievements is compilation of a comprehensive Dictionary of the English Language which he completed in a few years, while committees of dozens of scholars of other countries were taking decades to assemble dictionaries in their tongues. Helpful were his mastery of Greek and Latin and the classics and his near-perfect memory for what he had very widely read. With its apt citations it is considered a work of literature.
Other valuable works include the poem "The Vanity of Human Wishes", his highly original criticism of Shakespeare, biographies, biographical sketches called "Lives of the Poets", essays, and many speeches and lectures written for others for free and not for attribution to Johnson. For example, without formal training in the law, Johnson wrote legal lectures for delivery by the successor to the great Blackstone.
Another example. For a newspaper he wrote a number of Parliamentary speeches. It was illegal to report the actual speeches, so Johnson sent someone to listen to them and make notes on their context. From the notes and his fine knowledge of the world, Johnson invented speeches and printed them as disquisitions from a fictional land, so that his perceiving public could sense the issues involved. Johnson's speeches were often so far superior to the actual ones that the politicians began claiming them, and they came to be collected and reprinted as genuine.
Johnson is said to be after Shakespeare the most quoted man in the English language; much of it from conversation recorded by associates. He did his own thinking about everything, great or small. He could have been a withering satirist to match Swift but was by will or by nature generous, and from his own struggles and erudition was sympathetic to trials and obstacles threatening everyone and was likely wary of his power to inflict harm.
If you are wanting an easy read about Johnson and have not already done so, then try Boswell's "Life of Johnson". The drawback is that nearly all of that book is about the last third or fourth of Johnson's life; that is, when Boswell knew him. Still, that book is a solid classic.
This biography covers Johnson's entire life, and Bate fills in the years missing from Boswell and corrects errors. There are two quibbles. Bate writes in a style that is amiable, wise and non-academic, but a little too careful to read effortlessly. And he does a bit more of psychologizing than usual, though it is done well, and primarily for Johnson's formative years. That this won the 1978 Pulitzer Prize for biography should not deter anyone.
But it is Johnson himself who carries the day to make this an easy five-star recommendation.… (meer)