Dr Samuel Johnson’s literary works are full of variety and interest. They include biographies, essays, political pamphlets, significant poems, a body of literary criticism remarkable for its range and shrewdness, a famous dictionary, and an edition of Shakespeare’s plays.Throughout his life, Johnson suffered from strong feelings of guilt and a very real fear of insanity. These feelings had a strong influence on his writings, forcing him to communicate, to ‘remind’ his readers of th...

First published in 1971, Reinterpretations focusses upon a group of closely related major poems—L’Allegro and Il Penseroso, Milton’s companion pieces, and Lycidas, Pope’s Rape of the Lock and Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot, and Johnson’s London. The critical and interpretive light which Professor Hardy brings to bear on these works constitutes a considerable reinterpretation which informs our understanding of seventeenth and eighteent...