Search

This article critically appraises the book "Political Journal of George Bubb Dodington," by J. Carswell and L. Dralle. Originally comprising eight folio notebooks, the "Diary"--part of a larger political archive on deposit at Harvard was supplemented in this edition with first-hand accounts of conversations, drafts of speeches, as well as numerous informative letters from Dodington to prominent correspondents all previously unpublished. Here Dodington's letter confirms what historians have tong suspected: that he was directly involved in these proceedings to the point of actually putting pen to paper, producing and submitting for Bute's inspection the draft of a pamphlet addressing both the German war and the impending peace with France.

This article focuses on the book "An Essay in aid of a Grammar of Assent," by J.H. Newman. In the ninth chapter of the "Grammar of Assent" Newman discusses the importance of the faculty which he describes as the illative sense. It has generally been assumed that Newman was the first person to use the word illative in order to describe the human faculty for making inferences; thus, for example, Newman's "Grammar of Assent" has been cited as the first occurrence of the word in this sense. The same usage, however, was already to be found in paper on the influence of the imagination.

A literary criticism is provided on the Briitsh writer and lieutenant Frederick Hardman's article titled "Pacific Rovings," which offered a review of the book "Omoo," by Herman Melville, appearing within the June 1847 issue of the journal "Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine." An overview of the disagreement over the title of Melville's aforementioned book between Melville and the publisher John Murray is provided.

The article examines the claim from scholar Boris Borukhov that he discovered documentary evidence that playwright William Shakespeare had a private collection of books despite no books mentioned in his will. According to the author, Borukhov's citation of a 1626 inventory of poet Richard Barnfield, a contemporary of Shakespeare, is actually a reference to the inventory of Barnfield's father of the same name and therefore has to relevance to Shakespeare.

The article compares and contrasts the literary works by English author John Dryden created and published by printers and booksellers Henry Herringman and Jacob Tonson the elder. It argues that Tonson helped create the modern field of publishing by acting as a literary agent, marketer, and promoter for Dryden and his works.

The article focuses on the comment of Alan Bird on Arthur Rimbaud's poem "Wagga Wagga Berry." It is to be feared that Bird's interesting suggestion about the much discussed origin of Rimbaud's poem will mislead readers of the journal "Notes and Queries." At the beginning of his article, Bird refers to J. M. Cocking's "A Season in London." Readers will search for this work in vain. What they will find, in the "Times Literary Supplement" for September 3 1976, is Professor Cocking's review under that title of V. P. Underwood's book, "Rimbaud et l' Angleterre," which is nowhere mentioned in Bird's note.

The article discusses eighteenth-century British author and digester Giles Jacob, focusing especially on his 1720 book "An Historical Account of the Lives and Writings of Our most Considerable English Poets, whether Epick, Lyrick, Elegaick, Epigrammatists, &c.," the second of his two-volume "Poetical Register." The book compiles accounts of the lives of 209 English poets, based particularly upon a similar 1687 work by almanac-maker William Winstanley, while also using contemporary gossip of authors generally known in London, England, as well as based upon his personal collaboration with contemporary poets in creating their public personas.

The author presents additional attributions for eighteenth-century book reviews written by Scottish poet and author Tobias Smollett for issues published between 1757 and 1763 of the British periodical "The Critical Review." The attributions are based on stylistic similarities with Smollett's own books such as "The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom," "The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle," and "The Adventures of Roderick Random." Topics of works reviewed by Smollett include medicine, botany, and voyages while the authors of the works he reviewed include Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Charles Louis Liger, and Isaac Ware.

The article discusses the case of an amendation by the eighteenth-century critic Theobald of the book "Hamlet V. ii. 42." Not only has writer Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg's reading, been neglected by the most recent editor of the book "Hamlet," but also Theobald himself left it out of his own edition. As Harold Jenkins notes in his New Arden edition of Hamlet, "A review of the diverse explanations finds none satisfactory and most tendentious." Jenkins then points to three different interpretations, each of which he finds unsatisfactory.

The article discusses the childhood reading habits of author Samuel Taylor Coleridge. In an 1832 notebook entry, Coleridge claimed to have read the entire contents of a library in the Cheapside area of London, England. The library has been previously identified by the scholar J. B. Beer as John Boosey's City Library and a copy of the library's catalog is preserved in Spain. Coleridge's interest in metaphysics and theology during that time is considered, especially gothic romances and how these influenced his own writing.

The article presents information on the book "A House for Mr Biswas," by V.S. Naipaul. The influence of the tradition of the English comic novel on V.S. Naipaul's fiction, though perhaps a fairly minor element in his creative process, seems especially relevant in this book. In particular, a comparison of that novel with H.G. Wells's "The History of Mr Polly" shows some remarkable, if superficial, parallels. Like Mr Biswas, Mr Polly is an anti-hero, a clown, an unsuccessful small shopkeeper, a chronic dyspeptic trapped into marriage with an unsympathetic wife.

The article reports that several scholars have noted that English poet and dramatist William Shakespeare was recalling his own device of a contradictory favourable reading in his book "2 Henry VI (Part 1), where the character Eleanor, the ambitious wife of Duke Humphrey, provides an optimistic interpretation of her husband's darkly prophetic dream. The author suggests that Shakespeare had an additional stronger stimulus for the diction as well as the tactic of character Decius Brutus in English satirist and pamphleteer Thomas Nashe's "The Terrors of the Night," a work devoted to the truth value of dreams, nightmares, witches, devils, and the like, and one frequently mined by Shakespeare elsewhere in the canon.

The article presents an excerpt of the book "Jane Austen's Letters," edited by R.W. Chapman. The letter is an undated joke correspondence exchanged between the character of the book Jane and her niece Anna, some time between 1812 and 1814. The letter was supposed to be an expression of Jane's admiration addressed to a novelist belonging from Norwich, England, the authoress of a sentimental novel, which Jane and Anna had been reading together. In later years Anna reminisced about the joke: One of these novels was a very lengthy affair written by that novelist of Norwich. Still later in the nineteenth century Anna's daughter Fanny Lefroy summarized the same episode.

The article discusses works of writers Jonathan Swift, Horace and the libels on Clarissa M. Delany. Swift chides Delany for complaining of the slings and arrows of outrageous rhymsters. Delany, like Horace, must be prepared `To pay the Penalty annext' to literary aspiration. At his suggestion that Delany could find refuge by simply slinking out of the race, Swift may have taken his epigraphic counsel from poet Juvenal--but it would appear that he took the argument with an eye on the favourite of the Wits, friend Horace.

This article presents comments related to literature. It seems likely that in referring to Pamela, which he identified as a book by Fielding, Brillat-Savarin was really thinking of Fielding's Amelia. An episode somewhat similar to the one summarized in "Physiologie du goat" occurs in Chapter 6 of Book IV of Fielding's novel. Some details in Brillat-Savarin's account do not occur in Amelia, but several details in the two accounts do coincide. The novel is by Fielding, and its title is a woman's name; each account has to do with a half-pay officer and his wife; and each account contrasts two ways of bringing the day to a close.