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Reference
>
Cambridge History
>
The Age of Johnson
>
Johnson and Boswell
>
The Rambler
and the Revival of the Periodical Essay
London
and
The Vanity of Human Wishes
Openly didactic purpose of
The Rambler;
success of the Collected Edition
CONTENTS
·
VOLUME CONTENTS
·
INDEX OF ALL CHAPTERS
·
BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD
The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes
(190721).
Volume X. The Age of Johnson.
VIII.
Johnson and Boswell
.
§ 14.
The Rambler
and the Revival of the Periodical Essay.
The conditions amid which Johnson revived the periodical essay differed widely from those amid which it originally flourished. In the interval of forty years, there had been a development of journalistic enterprise which was not paralleled in any other country. More than 150 periodicals, of one kind or another, had been meeting the needs of the reading public, and contributing to its steady growth in size and power. Some of these were on the model of
The Spectator,
while others, written with a different purpose, or planned to include a greater variety of matter, showed its influence. The periodical essay no longer offered any of the attractions of novelty. In its strict form, it was a type of journalism that was being crushed out of favour by politics and news. By 1750,
The Gentlemans Magazine
enjoyed a secure popularity, and had its rivals; and, in the previous year,
The Monthly Review
had been established. The time was not auspicious for beginning a paper devoted exclusively to meditations on matters of no immediate interest, without the assistance of any item of news, or of a single advertisement. But, in
The Rambler,
the periodical essay reasserted itself, and entered on the second of its two great decades, that of
The Rambler, The Adventurer, The World, The Connoisseur, The Idler
and
The Citizen of the World.
22
The effect of
The Rambler
was the more remarkable, in that Johnson was deficient in the qualifications of a periodical writer. The maxim that the dramas laws the dramas patrons give is equally true of the essay. It was not in Johnsons nature to bow to the public, however much he believed in its ultimate verdict. He spoke in his first number as if success depended on the choice of subject. But, in the treatment of his choice, he lacked the art of going to meet his readers; and they never came in great numbers. The circulation of
The Rambler
was only about 500 copies. But it raised the literary level of the periodical essay and set a standard of excellence to such papers as
The World,
whose sale was numbered in thousands.
23
CONTENTS
·
VOLUME CONTENTS
·
INDEX OF ALL CHAPTERS
·
BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD
London
and
The Vanity of Human Wishes
Openly didactic purpose of
The Rambler;
success of the Collected Edition
Shakespeare
·
Bible
·
Strunk
·
Anatomy
·
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·
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·
Reference
·
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·
Poetry
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19932015
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