Lives of the English Poets : Waller, Milton, Cowley

From the opening

SAMUEL JOHNSON, born at Lichfield in the year 1709, on the 7th of September Old Style, 18th New Style, was sixty-eight years old when he agreed with the booksellers to write his “Lives of the English Poets.” “I am engaged,” he said, “to write little Lives, and little Prefaces, to a little edition of the English Poets.” His conscience was also a little hurt by the fact that the bargain was made on Easter Eve. In 1777 his memorandum, set down among prayers and meditations, was “29 March, Easter Eve, I treated with booksellers on a bargain, but the time was not long.”

The history of the book as told to Boswell by Edward Dilly, one of the contracting booksellers, was this. An edition of Poets printed by the Martins in Edinburgh, and sold by Bell in London, was regarded by the London publishers as an interference with the honorary copyright which booksellers then respected among themselves. They said also that it was inaccurately printed and its type was small. A few booksellers agreed, therefore, among themselves to call a meeting of proprietors of honorary or actual copyright in the various Poets. In Poets who had died before 1660 they had no trade interest at all. About forty of the most respectable booksellers in London accepted the invitation to this meeting. They determined to proceed immediately with an elegant and uniform edition of Poets in whose works they were interested, and they deputed three of their number, William Strahan, Thomas Davies, and Cadell, to wait on Johnson, asking him to write the series of prefatory Lives, and name his own terms. Johnson agreed at once, and suggested as his price two hundred guineas, when, as Malone says, the booksellers would readily have given him a thousand. He then contemplated only “little Lives.”

A short sample. Read the whole book

More to read

• "Captains Courageous": A Story of the Grand BanksRudyard KiplingLiterature & Fiction191 pages
• "Captains Courageous": A Story of the Grand BanksRudyard KiplingLiterature & Fiction191 pages
• "I Say No"Wilkie CollinsLiterature & Fiction428 pages
• "Miss Lou"Edward Payson RoeLiterature & Fiction409 pages
• "Speaking of Operations--"Irvin S. CobbLiterature & Fiction37 pages