The Joy of Life
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Summary
The first volume of The Pleasures of Life mainly discusses reading, friendship, travel, home life, science, and education; the second volume mainly discusses health, wealth, painting, music, poetry, nature, and work. The Pleasures of Life and Lubbock's other essay collection, The Use of Life, can be read as companion volumes. Both resemble Bacon's Essays in their wisdom and wide-ranging references, but are longer and closer to modern life, making them suitable guides to life for young readers. This edition is translated by the translator Cao Minglun and includes annotations. This edition is translated by the translator Cao Minglun and includes more than 450 annotations.
Editor's review
Who it's for
A good fit for
- Readers seeking inner calm who hope to discover beauty and interest in daily life
- Literature lovers who enjoy nature writing and personal essays
- Urban readers who feel life is too fast-paced and long for spiritual relief
- History enthusiasts interested in Victorian British culture and thought
Not a good fit for
- Readers seeking practical methodologies or quick-success guides
- Readers who prefer strong plots and fast-paced narratives
Reading tips
- Best dipped into in the morning or before bed, when the mind is calm; there is no need to read it in one sitting.
- While reading, try observing your surroundings and recording a few small natural changes around you, as the author does.
- Compare the sections on reading and thinking with your own reading experience; this may spark new insights.
About the publisher
The Commercial Press is a publisher known for classic works and academic publishing, with titles spanning Eastern philosophy, foreign literature, world history, social culture, and applied psychology. Its list includes classical commentaries such as Zhu Xi's Collected Commentaries on the Analects and Wang Bi's Commentary on the Zhouyi, as well as modern annotated translations like Zhuangzi with Modern Notes and Translation. In foreign literature it offers War and Peace and Crime and Punishment, while in world history it carries Braudel's The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II. Applied psychology is represented by Irvin D. Yalom's Existential Psychotherapy, and ethical texts include a Greek-Chinese-English edition of the Nicomachean Ethics. Its authors and translators include Zhu Xi, Wang Bi, Yalom, Braudel, and translators such as Huang Zheng, Zhang Yiling, Shen Dongyu, and Tang Jialong, balancing the editing of original texts with academic translation.
Contents
- 版权信息
- 汉译世界文学名著丛书出版说明
- 初版序言
- 第二十版序言
- 上卷
- 第一章 谈快乐之义务
- 第二章 谈履责之乐
- 第三章 谈读书之乐
- 第四章 谈书之选择
- 第五章 谈交友之幸
- 第六章 论时间价值
- 第七章 谈游历之乐
- 第八章 谈居家之乐
- 第九章 漫谈科学
- 第十章 漫谈教育
- 下卷
- 序言
- 第十一章 论雄心与名誉
- 第十二章 论财富
- 第十三章 论健康
- 第十四章 论爱
- 第十五章 论绘画艺术
- 第十六章 论诗
- 第十七章 论音乐
- 第十八章 论自然之美
- 第十九章 论人生之苦忧
- 第二十章 论工作与休息
- 第二十一章 论宗教信仰
- 第二十二章 论进步之希望
- 第二十三章 论人之天命
- 译者后记
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About the author
John Lubbock was a British writer and naturalist, also commonly rendered in Chinese as Sir John Lubbock. His writings span natural science, entomology, and reflections on life, and among them The Pleasures of Life is a relatively widely circulated work, often classified in Chinese editions under Western philosophy. In an accessible tone, the book discusses the small but genuine pleasures of everyday life, setting out an understanding of happiness through nature observation, reading, and friendship, and stressing how appreciation of ordinary things nourishes the mind. Because the available materials are limited, his specific life, education, and public activities cannot be described in detail from public sources. Overall, Lubbock's writing combines a naturalist's powers of observation with the ease of an essayist, drawing reflections on life from things close at hand, which makes The Pleasures of Life a gentle and rewarding volume of Western life essays.
Cao Minglun is a Chinese translator long engaged in introducing foreign literature, though public information about him is limited and details such as his dates, birthplace and educational background are not clearly recorded. Judging from the thirteen works held in the collection, his translating interests center on classics of English and American literature, especially poetry and fiction. He has translated The Complete Poetry of Shakespeare, The Complete Poems of Frost and The Collected Works of Frost, showing a sustained grasp of the rhythm and feel of English verse; his fiction translations include Willa Cather's My Antonia, O Pioneers! and The Song of the Lark, as well as the complete dark tales and complete short stories of Edgar Allan Poe. Spanning mystery and detective fiction, foreign literature and classical poetry, these translations show a range that covers both Gothic, gloomy narrative and delicate lyrical prose, offering Chinese readers a varied set of texts for understanding the tradition of English-language literature.
