Biography | ||
| Picture above taken from http://www.wardy.org/dillard.html | ||
| Annie Dillard was born in 1945, and is now forty-nine and living and teaching in Connecticut (for perspective, Tinker Creek was written in 1974, when she was twenty-nine). She has an unquenchable thirst for knowledge, it seems. Often she reads over 100 books a year, on just about any topic imaginable. She's been this way from her childhood on. Annie is the oldest of three daughters, born to affluent parents. Her parents encouraged her to be creative and explore her surroundings. They taught her to have a good sense of humor. Her mother was defiant, a non-conformist, and incredibly energetic. Her father taught her everything from plumbing to economics to the intricacies of the novel On The Road. Annie enjoyed a childhood filled with many good memories - days of piano and dance classes, and rock and bug collecting. But there were also many troubles -- like Hitler's rise and the horrors of war. During her high school years, Annie rebelled against her affluent, country club upbringing. She hated everyone, got into trouble in school a lot. Around this time, her academic interests turned to poetry. She read all sorts of poetry, and was particularly interested in Ralph Waldo Emerson. She also wrote a lot of poetry on her own, sometimes using her own style, sometimes trying to imitate her favorite authors. Her interests in wildlife continued as well - with Annie still rereading her longtime favorite book once a year - The Field Book of Ponds & Streams. Next, Annie went to college at Hollins College, near Roanoke, Virginia and studied English, theology, and creative writing. She married her writing teacher, Richard Dillard (her maiden name is Doak) -- the person she says "taught her everything she knows" {Smith, 7} about writing. In 1968 she graduated with a Masters in English, after creating a 40-page thesis on Thoreau's Walden, which focused on the use of Walden Pond as "the central image and focal point for Thoreau's narrative movement between heaven and earth." {Smith, 7} When you read Tinker Creek it's obvious that Thoreau had an enormous influence on her own style of writing. The next couple of years after graduation, Annie spent painting, and writing, having several poems published. One thing I should mention now is Annie's religious background. Her family attended Presbyterian church when she was a child. She spent a few summers at a fundamentalist summer camp. During her rebellious teenage years, she quit her church because of the "hypocrisy". But, her priest was able to lure her back the next month with a well-thought-out argument based on the works of CS Lewis. After her college years, Annie became, as she says, "spiritually promiscuous," incorporating the ideas of many religious systems into her own personal religious world-view. Not only are there references to Christ, and the Bible in Tinker Creek, but also to Sufism, Buddhism, the Eskimo's religious system, and Hasidic Jews, just to name a few. She tries to look at every situation from every angle. (Just recently, Annie has converted to the Catholic Church.) | Annie's writing Tinker Creek was indirectly influenced by a near fatal attack of pneumonia which she was stricken with in 1971. After she recovered, Annie decided that she needed to experience life more fully. She spent four seasons living near Tinker Creek, an area surrounded by forests, creeks, mountains, and a myriad of animal life. She spent her time outdoors mostly, walking and camping, just being there with the nature. When she was inside, she mostly read. After living there for about a year, Annie began to write about her experiences there by the creek (challenged to write a book herself because the one she was reading at the moment was particularly bad). She started by writing a journal of her experiences, then transposed it all to notecards when the journal reached 20-plus volumes. It took her about 8 months to turn the notecards into the well-crafted Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. Towards the end of the 8 months she was so absorbed that she was spending 15, 16 hours a day writing, cut off from society, not even keeping up with the latest world news, living on coffee and coke. She lost 30 pounds and all of her plants died - she was so absorbed she forgot about everything else. Annie was timid about presenting her book to the public. She even thought of publishing it under a man's name, because she was worried that a theology book by a woman would not be well-received. But, she was worrying for no reason. The book was incredibly well-received. In 1975 she was awarded the Pulitzer for general non-fiction. The fame that came along with a Pulitzer winning book did not sit well with Annie. She didn't trust it. For example, she was bothered by all of the people who were coming to her wanting poems -- that had rejected her works in the past before she was famous. She moved to an isolated cabin on an island in the Pugent Sound, and lived there for a while before moving to Connecticut to teach. In 1982 she was honored with an invitation to take part in a cultural delegation of scholars, traveling with them to China. Since Tinker Creek, Annie has continued to write. Some of her other works include Ticket for a Prayer Wheel, a book of poetry, and An American Childhood, an autobiography of her early years. Her writing continues to meet with critical acclaim. She has been divorced and has remarried several times, and has a daughter now, born in 1984. The latest information I could find says that her current husband is a man named Robert who wrote "the best biography she had ever read" {Smith, 14} on Thoreau. Annie now works at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, as an adjunct professor of English and a writer-in-residence.
[Written by Sandra Stahlman Elliott] [This biography taken from http://www.well.com/user/elliotts/smse_dillard.html] | |
Showing posts with label writer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label writer. Show all posts
Thursday, January 08, 2009
Annie Dillard
(reference in next Sunday's sermon)
Thursday, October 09, 2008
Sitwells at Scarborough
Osbert Sitwell
His sister Edith, later Dame Edith, and their younger brother Sacheverell were born in Scarborough, the former at Wood End, the latter at Belvoir House.
Wood End, now a museum, in The Crescent was bought by the widowed Lady Louisa Sitwell, their grandmother, in 1870. Her son George was 10 when the family came to live in the house, so both he, and later his own children Osbert, Edith and Sacheverell, were very familiar with the resort.After Wood End was given to Sir George by Lady Louisa, he built the library wing and the connecting bridge across the conservatory. He left an account of the exotic birds that frequented the conservatory, and also his impressions of life in late 19th century Scarborough.
Wood End became the family's autumn and winter home, and it was there, during a frigid Scarborough winter, that Edith first noted the pattern of fern and feather mirrored by frost on the window.
Osbert Sitwell, five years younger than his sister, recalled his turn-of-the-century Scarborough childhood with affection. In the first volume of his autobiography, Left Hand, Right Hand, he gives us Davis, the nanny whose all-purpose remedy was Butler and Crisps Pomade Divine; and the sound of a band playing at the corner of the Crescent "and a voice somewhere singing 'Linger Longer, Lucy, Linger Longer, Lou"; and the Cat Man who mewed to himself on the sand. Osbert made pre-First World War Scarborough, thinly disguised as 'Newborough' the setting for his novel Before the Bombardment.
Sir George decided that it would be a good thing for Osbert to enter the town clerk's office. However, Osbert became a soldier in the Grenadier Guards and soon afterwards came the First World War.
The German bombardment of the resort on December 16 1914 provided Sir Osbert with the subject of his novel Before the Bombardment (1926). Some of Sir Osbert's short stories were also set in Scarborough, most notably Low Tide and the spine-chilling A Place of One' s Own. Early on in the latter of the two stories is a description of Newborough's seaside atmosphere of summer crowds, "hokey-pokey" sellers and banana vendors, then a novelty fruit. A film of A Place of One's Own starring the Huddersfield-born actor James Mason was made in 1945.
Just after the First World War and before he embarked on his career as an author, Captain Osbert Sitwell, as he then was, stood as Liberal candidate for the Scarborough constituency.
In 1925 Sir George Sitwell closed the mansion altogether, and nine years later he sold it to Scarborough Corporation.
One of the earliest visitors to Scarborough was Tobias Smollett, who described the spa town in Humphry Clinker, his novel about a journey round the country.
Scarborough, he said, "was a paltry town". However, he was clearly intrigued by the bathing protocols of the day which surrounded the famous spa.
"Imagine to yourself a small, snug, wooden chamber, fixed upon a wheel-carriage, having a door at each end and on each side a little window above, a beach below.
"The Bather ascending into this apartment by wooden steps, shuts himself in and begins to undress, while the attendant yokes a horse to th end next the sea, and draws the carriage forwards, till the surface of the water is on a level with the floor of the dressing room then he moves and fixes the horse to the other end. The person within being stripped opens the door to the seaward where he finds the guide ready and plunges headlong into the water.
"Should he be so weak or ill as to require a servant to put off and on his clothes, there is room enough in the apartment for half a dozen people. The guides who attend the ladies in the water are of their own sex and they and the female bathers have a dress of flannel for the sea; nay, they are provided with other conveniences for the support of decorum.
Creative centre draws on Sitwells connection
Published Date: 08 October 2008
GONE but not forgotten. Artists are celebrating the future of a new creative arts centre by looking back on its history as the home of one of Yorkshire's greatest literary families.
Crescent Arts in Scarborough, has opened its new gallery at Wood End, former home of the Sitwell family, now a suite of offices for a number of creative industries.
Edith, Osbert and Sacheverell spent much of their childhood at Wood End, and manyfans of the family, including leading author Susan Hill, who grew up in Scarborough, were concerned the connection might be lost in the redevelopment.
But Crescent Arts and the other business tenants are determined the family's contribution to the cultural landscape of the early 20th century should not be forgotten in the new surroundings.
The Sitwells, especially Edith, were leading lights of the avant guard of their day and had connections to Cecil Beaton through his many photographic portraits of the three siblings.
Crescent Arts still has one foot in the basement of Scarborough Art Galley, its former home, but has expanded into Wood End for its new Crescent Artspace activities.
Members teamed up with costume students at the resort's Yorkshire Coast College, Hull University, Scarborough School of Arts and New Media Arts, and photographer Graham Mack for a number of events to celebrate the life of the Sitwells.
Highlights include a display featuring the combined talents of visual artists, designers, and performers, inspired by Beaton's photo. The celebration would not be complete without the faces of the Sitwells themselves who appear as head sculptures on Corinthian columns, plus a haunting vision of Edith peeping through the library window.
Edith, Osbert and Sacheverell spent much of their childhood at Wood End, and many
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But Crescent Arts and the other business tenants are determined the family's contribution to the cultural landscape of the early 20th century should not be forgotten in the new surroundings.
The Sitwells, especially Edith, were leading lights of the avant guard of their day and had connections to Cecil Beaton through his many photographic portraits of the three siblings.
Crescent Arts still has one foot in the basement of Scarborough Art Galley, its former home, but has expanded into Wood End for its new Crescent Artspace activities.
Members teamed up with costume students at the resort's Yorkshire Coast College, Hull University, Scarborough School of Arts and New Media Arts, and photographer Graham Mack for a number of events to celebrate the life of the Sitwells.
Highlights include a display featuring the combined talents of visual artists, designers, and performers, inspired by Beaton's photo. The celebration would not be complete without the faces of the Sitwells themselves who appear as head sculptures on Corinthian columns, plus a haunting vision of Edith peeping through the library window.
Monday, June 16, 2008
The Biro is 70
Biro pen, invented by Laszlo Biro, turns 70
By John Bingham
Arguably the most important invention for the written word since the printing press, the humble biro pen is 70 years old.
Invented by Hungarian Laszlo Biro, the simple plastic ballpoint, owes its existence at least in part to the RAF.
Britain's airmen placed the first ever bulk orders for the implement during the Second World War.
They asked for more than 30,000 biros so that navigators could write at high altitude where fountain pens tended to leak.
Biro, a some-time journalist who had become increasingly agitated by splattering fountain pens, first hit on the idea in a Budapest printing shop when he saw an ink which dried almost as soon as it touched paper.
He later recalled: "It got me thinking how this process could be simplified right down to the level of an ordinary pen."
Working with his brother George, a chemist, he adapted the ink to make it thin enough to work in a ballpoint pen.
In the end the pair came up with the biro's distinctive nib, containing a tiny ball bearing which rolls as the pen moves.
Unlike earlier ballpoints it uses a pressurised tube rather than gravity.
Biro took out a British patent on June 15, 1938.
Forced to flee Hungary at the outbreak of the war the next year, he began production in Argentina in 1944.
The pen which now costs just a few pence originally retailed for the equivalent of £27.
Originally named the "Eterpen" it soon received its first bulk order from the RAF.
More than 100 billion have since been sold and last year the leading manufacturer Bic sold 216 million in Britain alone.
By John Bingham
Arguably the most important invention for the written word since the printing press, the humble biro pen is 70 years old.
Invented by Hungarian Laszlo Biro, the simple plastic ballpoint, owes its existence at least in part to the RAF.
Britain's airmen placed the first ever bulk orders for the implement during the Second World War.
They asked for more than 30,000 biros so that navigators could write at high altitude where fountain pens tended to leak.
Biro, a some-time journalist who had become increasingly agitated by splattering fountain pens, first hit on the idea in a Budapest printing shop when he saw an ink which dried almost as soon as it touched paper.
He later recalled: "It got me thinking how this process could be simplified right down to the level of an ordinary pen."
Working with his brother George, a chemist, he adapted the ink to make it thin enough to work in a ballpoint pen.
In the end the pair came up with the biro's distinctive nib, containing a tiny ball bearing which rolls as the pen moves.
Unlike earlier ballpoints it uses a pressurised tube rather than gravity.
Biro took out a British patent on June 15, 1938.
Forced to flee Hungary at the outbreak of the war the next year, he began production in Argentina in 1944.
The pen which now costs just a few pence originally retailed for the equivalent of £27.
Originally named the "Eterpen" it soon received its first bulk order from the RAF.
More than 100 billion have since been sold and last year the leading manufacturer Bic sold 216 million in Britain alone.
Monday, December 17, 2007
Man born to be King
50th anniversary of death today.
Dorothy Leigh Sayers was born at Oxford on 13th June 1893, the only child of the Rev. Henry Sayers, of Anglo-Irish descent. Her father was at the time headmaster of Christ Church Cathedral School, and she was born in the headmaster's house. She was brought up at Bluntisham Rectory, Cambridgeshire, and went to the Godolphin School, Salisbury, where she won a scholarship to Somerville College, Oxford. In 1915 she graduated with first class honours in modern languages. Disliking the routine and seclusion of academic life she joined Blackwell's, the Oxford publishers, worked with her Oxford friend Eric Whelpton at L'École des Roches in Normandy, and from 1922 until 1931 served as copywriter at the London advertising firm of Bensons.
In 1923 she published her first novel, Whose Body, which introduced Lord Peter Wimsey, her hero for fourteen volumes of novels and short stories. She also wrote four other novels in collaboration and two serial stories for broadcasting. Writing full time she rose to be the doyen of crime writers and in due course president of the Detection Club. Her work, carefully researched and widely varied, included poetry, the editing of collections with her erudite introductions on the genre, and the translating of the Tristan of Thomas from mediaeval French. She admired E C Bentley and G K Chesterton and numbered among her friends T S Eliot, Charles Williams and C S Lewis.
She married Arthur Fleming in 1926. In 1928 her father died at Christchurch in the Fens, his last parish, and she bought a cottage at Witham, Essex, to accommodate her mother. On the latter's death a year later she moved in herself and bought the house next door, No 22 Newland Street, to throw the two houses into one. There she worked until her death in 1957.
Gaudy Night was to be the culmination of the Wimsey saga, but her friend Muriel St Clare Byrne persuaded her to collaborate in putting Lord Peter on the stage in Busman's Honeymoon. The play was successfully launched in December 1936, and she gave up crime writing except for the book of the play and three short stories. With her new financial security she turned thankfully to the work for which she had been trained.
The stage fascinated her. She had already been asked to write a play, The Zeal of Thy House, for the Canturbury Festival. She followed this with six more, up to the Colchester Festival play, The Emperor Constantine in 1951. The most momentous was The Man Born to be King, written for broadcasting in children's hour at the request of the BBC. Her presentation of Christ's voice speaking modern English raised a storm of protest and revolutionised religious play-writing. Opposition stimulated her. She would never compromise where her art was concerned.
Her theology was traditionally Anglican with emphasis on doctrine. Every available moment of her time was spent writing, to the small hours of the morning. Letters, articles and essays streamed from her pen. The war led her to write Begin Here, followed by The Mind of the Maker, in which she compares the human with the Divine creator. She explored by-ways of knowledge, delighted in puzzles and enjoyed many a fight which she conducted with wit and good humour. Her formidable presence, magnificent brain and logical presentation put her in great demand as a lecturer. She worked with the Rev. Patrick McLaughlin at the St Anne's centre for Christian discourse and became in 1952 churchwarden of her London parish, St Thomas-cum-St Annes.
She found her culminating role after the war. Dante's writings had long intrigued her. Now she taught herself old Italian and made a translation in terza rima of The Divine Comedy unmatched for its popularity and the clarity of its notes. She also found time to finish her translation of the Song of Roland from the old French. But she unexpectedly died from heart failure on 17 December 1957 while engaged on Dante's third volume, Paradiso, and her friend Dr Barbara Reynolds completed her work. To the end she drove herself hard, living the philosophy she expressed in these words:
"The only Christian work is good work, well done"
The Man Born to be King is a radio drama based on the life of Jesus, produced and broadcast by the BBC during the Second World War. It is a play cycle consisting of twelve plays depicting specific periods in Jesus' life, from the events surrounding his birth to his death and resurrection. It was first broadcast by the BBC Home Service on Sunday evenings, beginning on December 21, 1941, with new episodes broadcast at 4-week intervals, ending on October 18, 1942. The series was written by novelist and dramatist Dorothy L. Sayers, and produced by Val Gielgud.
The twelve plays in the cycle are:
Kings in Judea
The King's Herald
A Certain Nobleman
The Heirs to the Kingdom
The Bread of Heaven
The Feast of Tabernacles
The Light and the Life
Royal Progress
The King's Supper
The Princes of This World
King of Sorrows
The King Comes to His Own
The project aroused a storm of controversy, even before it was broadcast. Objections arose to the very idea - atheists complained of Christian propaganda, while devout Christians declared that the BBC would be committing blasphemy by allowing the Christ to be impersonated by a human actor - and also to Sayers' approach to the material. Sayers, who felt that the inherent drama of the Gospel story had become muffled by familiarity and a general failure to think of its characters as real people, was determined to give the plays dramatic immediacy, featuring realistic, identifiable characters with human emotions and motivations. (And speech-patterns. The decision to have the characters speak in modern colloquial English was, by itself, the cause of much disquiet among those more used to hearing Jesus and his followers speaking in the polished and formal words of the King James Bible.)
In the event, although it continued to be criticised by conservative Christians - one group going so far as to proclaim the fall of Singapore in February 1942 to be a sign of God's displeasure with the series - The Man Born to be King was generally considered a great success, both as drama and as biblical representation.
The scripts of the series were first published in 1943[1], accompanied by a commentary by the author illuminating her attitude to the work and the reasoning behind particular aspects of her dramatisation. There have been many subsequent issues and editions.
(Serialised on BBC7 this week 9.15 -10.00 p.m.)
Dorothy Leigh Sayers was born at Oxford on 13th June 1893, the only child of the Rev. Henry Sayers, of Anglo-Irish descent. Her father was at the time headmaster of Christ Church Cathedral School, and she was born in the headmaster's house. She was brought up at Bluntisham Rectory, Cambridgeshire, and went to the Godolphin School, Salisbury, where she won a scholarship to Somerville College, Oxford. In 1915 she graduated with first class honours in modern languages. Disliking the routine and seclusion of academic life she joined Blackwell's, the Oxford publishers, worked with her Oxford friend Eric Whelpton at L'École des Roches in Normandy, and from 1922 until 1931 served as copywriter at the London advertising firm of Bensons.
In 1923 she published her first novel, Whose Body, which introduced Lord Peter Wimsey, her hero for fourteen volumes of novels and short stories. She also wrote four other novels in collaboration and two serial stories for broadcasting. Writing full time she rose to be the doyen of crime writers and in due course president of the Detection Club. Her work, carefully researched and widely varied, included poetry, the editing of collections with her erudite introductions on the genre, and the translating of the Tristan of Thomas from mediaeval French. She admired E C Bentley and G K Chesterton and numbered among her friends T S Eliot, Charles Williams and C S Lewis.
She married Arthur Fleming in 1926. In 1928 her father died at Christchurch in the Fens, his last parish, and she bought a cottage at Witham, Essex, to accommodate her mother. On the latter's death a year later she moved in herself and bought the house next door, No 22 Newland Street, to throw the two houses into one. There she worked until her death in 1957.
Gaudy Night was to be the culmination of the Wimsey saga, but her friend Muriel St Clare Byrne persuaded her to collaborate in putting Lord Peter on the stage in Busman's Honeymoon. The play was successfully launched in December 1936, and she gave up crime writing except for the book of the play and three short stories. With her new financial security she turned thankfully to the work for which she had been trained.
The stage fascinated her. She had already been asked to write a play, The Zeal of Thy House, for the Canturbury Festival. She followed this with six more, up to the Colchester Festival play, The Emperor Constantine in 1951. The most momentous was The Man Born to be King, written for broadcasting in children's hour at the request of the BBC. Her presentation of Christ's voice speaking modern English raised a storm of protest and revolutionised religious play-writing. Opposition stimulated her. She would never compromise where her art was concerned.
Her theology was traditionally Anglican with emphasis on doctrine. Every available moment of her time was spent writing, to the small hours of the morning. Letters, articles and essays streamed from her pen. The war led her to write Begin Here, followed by The Mind of the Maker, in which she compares the human with the Divine creator. She explored by-ways of knowledge, delighted in puzzles and enjoyed many a fight which she conducted with wit and good humour. Her formidable presence, magnificent brain and logical presentation put her in great demand as a lecturer. She worked with the Rev. Patrick McLaughlin at the St Anne's centre for Christian discourse and became in 1952 churchwarden of her London parish, St Thomas-cum-St Annes.
She found her culminating role after the war. Dante's writings had long intrigued her. Now she taught herself old Italian and made a translation in terza rima of The Divine Comedy unmatched for its popularity and the clarity of its notes. She also found time to finish her translation of the Song of Roland from the old French. But she unexpectedly died from heart failure on 17 December 1957 while engaged on Dante's third volume, Paradiso, and her friend Dr Barbara Reynolds completed her work. To the end she drove herself hard, living the philosophy she expressed in these words:
"The only Christian work is good work, well done"
The Man Born to be King is a radio drama based on the life of Jesus, produced and broadcast by the BBC during the Second World War. It is a play cycle consisting of twelve plays depicting specific periods in Jesus' life, from the events surrounding his birth to his death and resurrection. It was first broadcast by the BBC Home Service on Sunday evenings, beginning on December 21, 1941, with new episodes broadcast at 4-week intervals, ending on October 18, 1942. The series was written by novelist and dramatist Dorothy L. Sayers, and produced by Val Gielgud.
The twelve plays in the cycle are:
Kings in Judea
The King's Herald
A Certain Nobleman
The Heirs to the Kingdom
The Bread of Heaven
The Feast of Tabernacles
The Light and the Life
Royal Progress
The King's Supper
The Princes of This World
King of Sorrows
The King Comes to His Own
The project aroused a storm of controversy, even before it was broadcast. Objections arose to the very idea - atheists complained of Christian propaganda, while devout Christians declared that the BBC would be committing blasphemy by allowing the Christ to be impersonated by a human actor - and also to Sayers' approach to the material. Sayers, who felt that the inherent drama of the Gospel story had become muffled by familiarity and a general failure to think of its characters as real people, was determined to give the plays dramatic immediacy, featuring realistic, identifiable characters with human emotions and motivations. (And speech-patterns. The decision to have the characters speak in modern colloquial English was, by itself, the cause of much disquiet among those more used to hearing Jesus and his followers speaking in the polished and formal words of the King James Bible.)
In the event, although it continued to be criticised by conservative Christians - one group going so far as to proclaim the fall of Singapore in February 1942 to be a sign of God's displeasure with the series - The Man Born to be King was generally considered a great success, both as drama and as biblical representation.
The scripts of the series were first published in 1943[1], accompanied by a commentary by the author illuminating her attitude to the work and the reasoning behind particular aspects of her dramatisation. There have been many subsequent issues and editions.
(Serialised on BBC7 this week 9.15 -10.00 p.m.)
Thursday, December 13, 2007
Samuel Johnson
A brief biography of Samuel Johnson is a difficult task, but here we go. Samuel Johnson's life covers many points, but it's a story about overcoming considerable adversity, to ultimately become one of the best known men of his age.
Johnson was born in Lichfield, England, on September 18, 1709; his father Michael was a bookseller. Johnson was not a healthy infant, and there was considerable question as to whether he would survive: he was baptized almost immediately. Johnson was scarred from scrofula, and suffered a loss of hearing and was blind in one eye, thanks largely to nursing from a tubercular nursemaid. During his toddler years, he had an open "issue" in his arm, to drain fluids. Stop for a moment, and think about a small child being singled out in this way, and what it must have meant.
In spite of these infirmities, there are early tales of his independence. Once, when his babysitter failed to pick him up on time from nursery school, Johnson decided he would get home on his own, crawling on all fours in order to see the gutter and avoid falling in. The babysitter followed at some distance, but when Johnson saw her watching, protested against her following him, vehemently.
The availability of the books in his father's shop, and his natural proclivity for learning, contributed to his having extensive knowledge at an early age. When Johnson spent time with an elder cousin, he was exposed to a broad range of thinking and cultivation, of the sort he wouldn't have ordinarily seen in Lichfield. He later attended Oxford for about a year, but left for financial reasons. His poverty at Oxford was noticed by another student, who left a pair of new shoes outside Johnson's door during the night; while Johnson's poverty was itself humiliating, the fact that another would notice and make Johnson a beneficiary of charity enraged him.
So Johnson had to leave Oxford; it must have been a horrible disappointment to someone who was so learned, to leave for financial reasons, and see his academic inferiors succeed in an arena where he couldn't. During this period he went into a severe depression; his friend Edmund Hector helped him remain productive, in spite of the depression.
In 1735, Johnson married Elizabeth "Tetty" Porter, a woman several years older than him: she was 46, and he 25.
As a young man, Johnson tried his hand at a career as a schoolmaster, and was unsuccessful-- largely because he didn't have a degree. To some extent, his ungainly appearance, twitches, and mannerisms made it difficult to maintain the respect of his students. He eventually (1737) went to London to seek his fortune, and found employment as a writer for various periodicals. In addition to writing book reviews and derivative biographies, at one point he was assigned the task of writing thinly disguised reports of the debates in Parliament. (Censorship ruled out actual reportage, so Johnson had to write from surreptitiously-taken notes, filling them out in much the same way as a TV movie made today might embellish a skeleton of fact into a drama. The identities of the speakers were thinly disguised; readers could tell who was who, and the government was unwilling to admit to the underlying truth.)
Johnson obtained some notice with his works London (1738) and The Vanity of Human Wishes (1749) -- both of which are considered great poems -- but his efforts in the 1750's are part of why he's considered a titan. This decade saw the creation of his Dictionary (1755), his Rambler essays (1750-52), his Idler essays (1758-60), and Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia (1759). This was a trying decade for him: his wife died in 1752 (just after the cessation of the Rambler essays), and she was often on his mind.
Johnson received a government pension in 1762. He was reluctant to accept it, but on accepting the purpose as being for past efforts, and not future efforts, he accepted it. The funds were a significant help, and the periods where he was threatened with debtor's prison were put behind him.
Shortly after this period, Johnson met a young Scot named James Boswell (in 1763) in Thomas Davies bookstore in London. The two became fast friends. Boswell took notes of their conversations, and leveraged those notes and other material into the mammoth, landmark biography "The Life of Samuel Johnson." (The full title is a bit longer.)
Johnson's output included far more than just his output of the 1750's, of course. It also includes a complete edition of Shakespeare; a number of frequently cited political tracts; sermons; a description of his 1773 tour to Scotland with Boswell, with considerable discussion of the change of an era; and a series of biographies of numerous British poets (The Lives of the Poets), commissioned to accompany reprints of each poet's works.
Johnson died on December 13, 1784. Boswell's biography was published in 1791. Boswell's biography, by the way, was not the first, nor was it the last; it is, however, a popular place to start.
Johnson was a devout, conservative Anglican, a staunch Tory and a compassionate man, supporting a number of poor friends under his own roof. He was an opponent of slavery and once proposed a toast to the "next rebellion of the negroes in the West Indies".
Johnson was born in Lichfield, England, on September 18, 1709; his father Michael was a bookseller. Johnson was not a healthy infant, and there was considerable question as to whether he would survive: he was baptized almost immediately. Johnson was scarred from scrofula, and suffered a loss of hearing and was blind in one eye, thanks largely to nursing from a tubercular nursemaid. During his toddler years, he had an open "issue" in his arm, to drain fluids. Stop for a moment, and think about a small child being singled out in this way, and what it must have meant.
In spite of these infirmities, there are early tales of his independence. Once, when his babysitter failed to pick him up on time from nursery school, Johnson decided he would get home on his own, crawling on all fours in order to see the gutter and avoid falling in. The babysitter followed at some distance, but when Johnson saw her watching, protested against her following him, vehemently.
The availability of the books in his father's shop, and his natural proclivity for learning, contributed to his having extensive knowledge at an early age. When Johnson spent time with an elder cousin, he was exposed to a broad range of thinking and cultivation, of the sort he wouldn't have ordinarily seen in Lichfield. He later attended Oxford for about a year, but left for financial reasons. His poverty at Oxford was noticed by another student, who left a pair of new shoes outside Johnson's door during the night; while Johnson's poverty was itself humiliating, the fact that another would notice and make Johnson a beneficiary of charity enraged him.
So Johnson had to leave Oxford; it must have been a horrible disappointment to someone who was so learned, to leave for financial reasons, and see his academic inferiors succeed in an arena where he couldn't. During this period he went into a severe depression; his friend Edmund Hector helped him remain productive, in spite of the depression.
In 1735, Johnson married Elizabeth "Tetty" Porter, a woman several years older than him: she was 46, and he 25.
As a young man, Johnson tried his hand at a career as a schoolmaster, and was unsuccessful-- largely because he didn't have a degree. To some extent, his ungainly appearance, twitches, and mannerisms made it difficult to maintain the respect of his students. He eventually (1737) went to London to seek his fortune, and found employment as a writer for various periodicals. In addition to writing book reviews and derivative biographies, at one point he was assigned the task of writing thinly disguised reports of the debates in Parliament. (Censorship ruled out actual reportage, so Johnson had to write from surreptitiously-taken notes, filling them out in much the same way as a TV movie made today might embellish a skeleton of fact into a drama. The identities of the speakers were thinly disguised; readers could tell who was who, and the government was unwilling to admit to the underlying truth.)
Johnson obtained some notice with his works London (1738) and The Vanity of Human Wishes (1749) -- both of which are considered great poems -- but his efforts in the 1750's are part of why he's considered a titan. This decade saw the creation of his Dictionary (1755), his Rambler essays (1750-52), his Idler essays (1758-60), and Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia (1759). This was a trying decade for him: his wife died in 1752 (just after the cessation of the Rambler essays), and she was often on his mind.
Johnson received a government pension in 1762. He was reluctant to accept it, but on accepting the purpose as being for past efforts, and not future efforts, he accepted it. The funds were a significant help, and the periods where he was threatened with debtor's prison were put behind him.
Shortly after this period, Johnson met a young Scot named James Boswell (in 1763) in Thomas Davies bookstore in London. The two became fast friends. Boswell took notes of their conversations, and leveraged those notes and other material into the mammoth, landmark biography "The Life of Samuel Johnson." (The full title is a bit longer.)
Johnson's output included far more than just his output of the 1750's, of course. It also includes a complete edition of Shakespeare; a number of frequently cited political tracts; sermons; a description of his 1773 tour to Scotland with Boswell, with considerable discussion of the change of an era; and a series of biographies of numerous British poets (The Lives of the Poets), commissioned to accompany reprints of each poet's works.
Johnson died on December 13, 1784. Boswell's biography was published in 1791. Boswell's biography, by the way, was not the first, nor was it the last; it is, however, a popular place to start.
Johnson was a devout, conservative Anglican, a staunch Tory and a compassionate man, supporting a number of poor friends under his own roof. He was an opponent of slavery and once proposed a toast to the "next rebellion of the negroes in the West Indies".
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