Cover; Contents; Acknowledgements; List of Abbreviations; Introduction; Part I: Johnson, Melancholy and Early Literary Biography 1640-1791; 1 Early Literary Biographies: Walton's Donne to Sprat's Cowley; 2 Johnson, Melancholy and Biography; 3 Eighteenth-century Melancholy: Boswell and Cheyne, The English Malady; Part II: Melancholy and Biographical Experimentation around 1800; 4 Philosophical Biography (1): Godwin's Memoirs of Mary Wollstonecraft; 5 Philosophical Biography (2): Currie's Life of Burns; 6 Religious Melancholy: Hayley's Life of Cowper; Conclusion; Notes; Bibliography; Index
Summary
This book traces the development of literary biographyin the eighteenth century; how writers' melancholy was probed to explore the innerlife. Case studies of a number of significant authors reveal the 1790s as a time ofbiographical experimentation. Reaction against philosophical biography led to anineteenth-century taste for romanticized lives