Johnson himself wrote in 1782: 'I know not that I have written any thing more generally commended than the Lives of the Poets'. Always recognized as a major bio

Samuel Johnson's last literary work, the Lives of the Poets, offers a detailed survey of English poetry from the early seventeenth century down to Johnson's own

This major work brings together, for the first time in a single volume, all the recognized sources of Marlowe's dramatic work. Many of the forty-two texts prese

Concentrating on the period 1660-1781, this book explores how the English literary past was made. It charts how antiquarians unearthed the raw materials of the