John Gay, a Profession of Friendship: A Critical Biography - Hardcover

"Nokes is a fine narrative writer, adept at providing the social, literary, and political details that give a good sense of a life lived within its varied and ultimately incoherent context....Highly recommended....Should appeal to those interested in Gay, Pope, Swift, and their contemporaries."--Choice"An absorbing book....Describes a life which is fascinating because it spans a fascinating period of history."--Literary Review"A book which is not only a work of fine scholarship, but also one, admirably written, which offers unbounded satisfaction and intense interest. Finally, one must also compliment the Oxford University Press on a publication of an elegance, even beauty, which is as rare today as it is to find a reader of Gay's poems."--Daily Telegraph"Much more than a conventional life-and-works' biography....David Nokes illuminates not just a single career, but also an entire literary milieu. Written with a positively Augustan deftness of style and wit, this is a model literary biography - meticulously researched, delicately argued, and refreshingly free of special pleading."--Sunday Telegraph"The author is a don and his book is a scholarly one....It includes extensive comparisons between Gay's poems and those of his contemporaries...researched with impressive thoroughness....Noke writes elegantly."--Sunday Times

This major biography is the first full-length life of John Gay (1685-1732) for over fifty years. David Nokes's detailed and extensive research has unearthed several new discoveries, including hitherto unpublished letters, and possible attributions. Presenting Gay as a complex character, torn between the hopes of court preferment and the assertion of literary independence, this book is at once a lively and readable biography for the non-specialist, as well as a comprehensive and scholarly study. Perhaps best known for The Beggar's Opera , John Gay is here revealed to be a contradictory figure whose life defies strict generic categories. Often cast as a neglected genius, dependent upon others, Gay in fact left a healthy estate after his death. Depicted both as childlike innocent and rakish ladies' man by his friends, the same writer produced Polly , the most successful and subversive theatrical satire of his generation, which was banned from the stage. David Nokes argues that Gay's self-effacing and self-mocking literary persona was largely responsible for perpetuating an image of himself as a genial literary non-entity This book is intended for anyone interested in 18th-century Eng