Samuel Johnson and the Life of Reading - Hardcover

"This book's strong and original starting point is to study Samuel Johnson through his activity as a reader, not as a writer. By looking at Johnson as a representative and influential reader, DeMaria helps us to understand not only one author but the history of reading itself. No one can read this book without learning a great deal about practices of reading and how they change from one age to the next." -- Lawrence Lipking, Northwestern University

""Enacts Johnson's celebrated variation on a theme from Horace -- it does not merely delight and instruct, but rather instructs by delighting us.. DeMaria proves himself a reader altogether worthy of his subject." -- Times Literary Supplement