David Nokes
British literary scholar and biographer noted for his work on 18th-century literature, including biographies of Samuel Johnson, Jonathan Swift, Jane Austen, and John Gay; professor of English at The Open University.
Books
This list of books are ONLY the books that have been ranked on the lists that are aggregated on this site. This is not a comprehensive list of all books by this author.
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1. Samuel Johnson
A Life
Drawing on letters and contemporary testimony, this biography follows the great 18th-century lexicographer and moralist from provincial obscurity through poverty, marriage, and illness to literary eminence in London, reappraising the Dictionary, essays, and Lives of the Poets while foregrounding complex bonds with his wife, household, Boswell, and the Thrales. It emphasizes the tensions between piety and combativeness, charity and severity, and the shadow of melancholy and physical tics, challenging the familiar legend to reveal a more vulnerable, volatile, and deeply humane figure.
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