Abstract
In his Life of Johnson, James Boswell illustrates Johnson’s concern for the “dignity of literature” by recording an incident in which Oliver Goldsmith found himself slighted by a nobleman:
Goldsmith, in his diverting simplicity, complained one day in a mixed company, of Lord Camden. “I met him (said he) at Lord Clare’s house in the country, and he took no more notice of me than if I had been an ordinary man.” The company having laughed heartily, Johnson stood forth in defence of his friend. “Nay, Gentlemen, (said he,) Dr. Goldsmith is in the right. A nobleman ought to have made up to such a man as Goldsmith; and I think it is much against Lord Camden that he neglected him.”1
In the field of consumption, consumer goods should not be seen as the mere objects of a semiotic democracy, but rather as the objects through which social struggles are conducted and social relationships between groups articulated in everyday life.
Martyn J. Lee, Consumer Culture Reborn (1993)
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Notes
James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson ed. George Birkbeck Hill, rev. L.E Powell, 6 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1934–50), 3:311.
Alexander Beljame, Men of Letters and the English Public in the Eighteenth Century, ed. Bonamy Dobrée, trans. E. O. Lorimer ( London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1948 ), 385.
A. S. Collins, Authorship in the Days of Johnson ( New York: E. P. Dutton, 1929 ), 193.
J. W. Saunders, The Profession of English Letters (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1964 ), 145; 95; 175.
Jill Campbell, Natural Masques: Gender and Identity in Fielding’s Plays and Novels ( Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995 ), 8.
Michael Roper and John Tosh, “Introduction: Historians and the Politics of Masculinity,” in Manful Assertions: Masculinities in Britain since 1800, ed. Michael Roper and John Tosh ( London: Routledge, 1991 ), 18.
Mark Breitenberg, Anxious Masculinity in Early Modern England ( Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996 ), 2.
James Prior, The Life of Oliver Goldsmith 2 vols. (London, 1837), 2:276–77.
James Scott, The Perils of Poetry (London and Cambridge, 1766), 16. References to this poem are cited by page number.
William Dunkin, Select Poetical Works of the Late William Dunkin D.D., 2 vols. (Dublin, 1769–70), 2:294. References to this poem are cited by page number.
Wendy Wall, The Imprint of Gender: Authorship and Publication in the English Renaissance ( Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993 ), 185.
Robert Lloyd, “To George Colman, Esq. A Familiar Epistle,” Poems (London, 1762), 154–59.
Sir John Hawkins, The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D., Johnsoniana 20 (1787; reprint, New York: Garland, 1974 ), 420.
John Ginger, The Notable Man: The Life and Times of Oliver Goldsmith ( London: Hamish Hamilton, 1977 ), 102.
Henry Fielding, The Author’s Farce, The Complete Works of Henry Fielding ed. William Ernest Henley, 16 vols. (New York: Croscup and Sterling, 1902), 8:222.
James Ralph, The Case of Authors by Profession or Trade (1758) (Gainesville, FL: Scholars’ Facsimiles & Reprints, 1966), 21; 22.
John Barrell, English Literature in History 1730–80: An Equal, Wide Survey (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1983), 44; 47.
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© 2001 Linda Zionkowski
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Zionkowski, L. (2001). Introduction. In: Men’s Work. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780312299743_1
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