A modern biography of Samuel Johnson that will serve as the definitive work on the legendary British man of lettersIn this groundbreaking portrait of Samuel Johnson, David Nokes positions the great thinker in his rightful place as an active force in the Enlightenment, not a mere recorder or performer, and demonstrates how his interaction with life impacted his work. This is the story of how Johnson struggled to define the English language, why he embarked upon such ...

'Pictures of perfection make me sick and wicked,' Jane Austen wrote to her niece Fanny Knight a few months before she died. Yet most traditional accounts of Austen's life have insisted on portraying her as just such a picture of perfection. In his 1997 biography David Nokes re-examined Austen, and presented a far richer and livelier picture of the woman who once wrote in another of her letters, 'If I am a wild beast, I cannot help it...''A fine book, probably the best tribute to th...

First published in 1995, David Nokes' major biography of John Gay (1685-1732) was the first full-length life of Gay for over fifty years, and drew on hitherto unpublished letters. Presenting Gay as a complex character, torn between the hopes of court preferment and the assertion of literary independence, Nokes offers both a lively and accessible read for the non-specialist and a comprehensive scholarly study.Best-known for The Beggar's Opera, Gay is here revealed as a contr...

'The best biography of Swift to date.' Michael Foot, Observer'David Nokes's book is splendid.' Denis Donoghue, London Review of BooksDavid Nokes presents a gripping and authoritative portrait of Swift in his multifarious roles as satirist, politician, churchman and friend. Drawing on the most recent scholarship, he seeks in particular to re-establish a proper balance between Swift's public and private lives.'Some books give the reader an immediate ...

Race remains a potent and divisive force in our society. Whether it is the shooting of minority people by the police, the mass incarceration of people of color, or the recent KKK rallies that have been in the news, it is clear that the scars from the United States’ histories of slavery and racial discrimination run too deep to simply be ignored. But what are the most productive ways to deal with the toxic and torturous legacies of American racism?Slavery’s Descendants brin...