Samuel Johnson Among the Modernists

The essays collected in Samuel Johnson Among the Modernists frame this major writer in an unfamiliar milieu and company: high modernism and its aftermath. By bringing Johnson to bear on the various authors and topics gathered here, the book foregrounds some aspects of modernism and its practitioners that would otherwise remain hidden and elusive, even as it sheds new light on Johnson. Writers discussed include T. S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf, Ezra Pound, Joseph Conrad, James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, Jorge Luis Borges, and Vladimir Nabokov. Chapter contributors include major scholars in their field, including Melvyn New, Jack Lynch, Thomas M. Curley, Greg Clingham and Clement Hawes. These ground-breaking essays offer a vital and exciting interrogation of Modernism from a wholly fresh perspective.

Anthony W. Lee’s research interests center upon Samuel Johnson and his circle, mentoring, and intertexuality. He has published five books and more than thirty essays on Johnson and eighteenth-century literature and culture. Anthony has taught at a number of colleges and universities, including the University of Arkansas, Arkansas Tech University, Kentucky Wesleyan College, the University of the District of Columbia, and the University of Maryland University College, where he also served as Director of the English and Humanities Program.