Publisher's Synopsis
Leslie Stephen's many years of work as editor of the Dictionary of National Biography led to his fascination with biography and, in particular, the intersection of the lives of authors with their literary work. In the first of three volumes of his biographical essays, we find Stephen discussing the matter searchingly in several general essays, followed by essays on individual writers of the 16th and 17th centuries. Two essays on Shakespeare (one of which is a witty parody of the authorship controversy surrounding the dramatist) constitute Stephen's most profound essays on this major figure. Essays on John Donne, John Milton, Jonathan Swift, and the obscure but interesting poet John Byrom follow, and the volume concludes with an enormous essay on the novelist Henry Fielding, whose career Stephen traces from his early days as a comic playwright to his pioneering novels. The essay, written for a collected edition of Fielding's works, remains one of the most comprehensive analysis of this author's work ever published.
