The letters of Samuel Johnson - Samuel Johnson

The Letters of Samuel Johnson, known as the Hyde Edition, is the most complete scholarly edition of Johnson's letters ever to appear. In editing these five volumes, Bruce Redford has included fifty-two newly discovered letters or parts of letters, and he has supplied more accurate versions of many others. Redford also has decoded numberous references that previously had resisted explanation, and his annotations integrate the vital discoveries of recent scholarship. The overall result is a far richer understanding of Samuel Johnson's life, work, and milieu. The Hyde Edition offfers major professional advances over all previous publication of these materials. It transcribes scores of texts from the original documents for the first time - a feature of special importance in the case of Johnsons's revealing letters to Hester Thrale, a number of which have been available only in expurgated form. It is the first edition systematically to record substantive deletions in a way that will allow readers a more intimate knowledge of stylistic procedures, mental hatits, and chains of association.;The Hyde Edition also documents the current disposition of the manuscripts, hundreds of which have changed hands in recent decades. Volume V includes those undated letters that cannot confidently be assigned to a specific year; these appear, ordered alphabetically by correspondent, in Appendix I. Appendix II lists "ghost" letters - those whose existence is documented in other sources. Translations of Johnson's letters in Latin appear in Appendix III. The comprehensive index is preceded by three letters that have recently been recovered and by supplementary annotation.