Lives of the English Poets: Waller, Milton, Cowley

Johnson, Samuel, 1709-1784Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 4.2

Word count: 333K words
Chapters: 34

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Lives of the English Poets : Waller, Milton, Cowley by Samuel JohnsonAuthor: Johnson, Samuel, 1709-1784,Language: English, Class: PR: Language and Literatures: English literature, Release Date: Feb 1, 2004

Editor's review

This book contains Johnson's three lives of Waller, Milton, and Cowley from Lives of the English Poets, selected from a free public-domain e-book from Project Gutenberg. With a biographer's force and a critic's judgment, Johnson places the three poets within the political and literary context of seventeenth-century England: Waller's court poetry and rhetorical skill, Milton's republican stance and epic ambition, and Cowley's lingering metaphysical manner and late-life change all gain concrete human depth under his pen. Its value lies not in providing complete documentation in the modern scholarly sense, but in showing how a great eighteenth-century critic understood his predecessors—decisive in judgment, sharp in language, and marked by clear personal bias, which is precisely why it is an important text for observing the history of English criticism. It suits readers interested in English literary history, life writing, and the critical tradition, and also serves as background reading for the works of Milton and other poets. The original is in English and is best read with notes or an introduction.

Who it's for

A good fit for

English literature students who need to understand eighteenth-century critical tradition and the writing of poets' lives
Readers of Milton, Waller, or Cowley who want the life and period background behind the works
General readers interested in biographical literature and the history of literary criticism
Readers with good English reading ability who are willing to engage with public-domain English originals

Not a good fit for

Rigorous researchers seeking modern scholarly documentation and detailed annotation
Beginners whose English reading is not yet proficient and who need a Chinese translation
Readers who only want the poets' original works rather than critical biographies

Reading tips

Read the Milton piece first, then go back to Waller and Cowley, to compare Johnson's standards of praise and blame.
Mark Johnson's critical judgments as you read, and after finishing compare them with modern literary histories to examine his biases.
After each life, read it alongside one or two representative poems by that poet to see how criticism and text illuminate each other.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

FAQ

Is this book a collection of the three poets' works or critical biographies?

It is critical biography. Johnson discusses the lives and poetic art of Waller, Milton, and Cowley rather than collecting their original poems. Reading it alongside collections of the three poets' works is more effective.

Is Johnson's critical stance objective?

It does not aim for objectivity in the modern sense. Johnson's judgments are decisive and his praise and blame are sharp, carrying eighteenth-century aesthetic and political biases, especially his reservations about Milton's republican stance. That bias is itself part of the value of reading him.

How difficult is the English original?

The text is eighteenth-century English, with long sentences and archaic diction, posing a certain barrier for non-native readers. Good English reading ability is recommended, or use an annotated edition or introductory materials.

What are the features of this e-book edition?

It is a free public-domain e-book from Project Gutenberg, an early released text, easy to obtain and search for free, but it usually contains no modern scholarly notes or detailed introduction, so readers need to supplement background materials themselves.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Johnson, Samuel, 1709-1784 Author

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) was an influential English writer, critic, and lexicographer. The collection holds 23 of his works, spanning poetry, essays, literary criticism, and dictionary writing. Representative titles include The Vanity of Human Wishes, Two Rambler papers, the multi-volume Lives of the Poets, the Preface to Shakespeare, and the Preface to a Dictionary of the English Language. His writing is known for its eloquent, concise prose and moral seriousness, and he excelled in biographical criticism and literary judgment, leaving a lasting mark on the English essay and critical tradition. Because publicly available information is limited, details of his life are not elaborated here.