Non-Fiction Books

Jack Lynch explores eighteenth-century British conceptions of the Renaissance, and the historical, intellectual, and cultural uses to which the past was put. He argues that scholars, editors, historians, religious thinkers, linguists, and literary critics defined themselves in relation to "the last age" or "the age of Elizabeth". This interdisciplinary study is of interest to cultural as well as literary historians of the eighteenth century.

A bibliography of studies of Samuel Johnson from 1986 to 1998. Dr Lynch records not only writings about Johnson and Boswell but also about a wide variety of related topics. There are nearly 2000 entries, alphabetically arranged for easy access through the indexes.

Lackbrain, oysterwench, wantwit, clotpoll--Samuel Johnson's famous dictionary of 1755 contained some of the ripest insults in the English language. In Samuel Johnson's Insults, Jack Lynch has compiled more than 300 of the curmudgeonly lexicographer's mightiest barbs, along with definitions only the master himself could elucidate. Word lovers will delight in flexing their linguistic muscles with devilishly descriptive vituperations that pack a wicked punch. Many of these zingers have long lain dormant. Some have even come close to extinction. Now they're back in all their prickly glory, ready to be relished once more.

Two volumes thick and 2,300 pages long, Samuel Johnson's Dictionary , published in 1755, marked a milestone in a language in desperate need of standards. No English dictionary before it had devoted so much space to everyday words, been so thorough in its definitions, or illustrated usage by quoting from Shakespeare and other great writers. Johnson's Dictionary would define the language for the next 150 years, until the arrival of the Oxford English Dictionary . Johnson's was the dictionary used by Jane Austen and Charles Dickens, Wordsworth and Coleridge, the Brontës and the Brownings, Thomas Hardy and Oscar Wilde. Modern dictionaries owe much to Johnson's work. This new edition, created by Levenger Press, contains more than 3,100 selections from the original, including etymology, definitions, and illustrative passages in their original spelling. Bristling with quotations, the Dictionary offers memorable passages on subjects ranging from books and critics to dreams and ethics. It also features three new indexes created out of entries in this edition: words found in Shakespeare's works, words from other great literary works, and piquant terms used in eighteenth-century discussions of such topics as law, medicine, and the sexes. Finally, Johnson's "Plan of a Dictionary of the English Language," seldom seen in print, which he wrote eight years before the Dictionary , is reproduced in its entirety. For those who appreciate literature, interpret the law, and love language, this a browser's delight―an encyclopedia of the age and a dictionary for the ages.

Samuel Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language, the first great English dictionary and one of the most famous books in the English language, appeared in April 1755. To commemorate the 250th anniversary, this volume brings together fourteen original essays by international scholars representing several disciplines: literature, lexicology, linguistics and bibliography. The essays explore familiar and unfamiliar aspects of Johnson's masterpiece, ranging from the history of patronage to the book's typographical design, from the political background to the treatment of compound words. Challenging the myths surrounding the book and offering the most comprehensive and wide-ranging study of the Dictionary ever attempted, these essays present fresh scholarship on the Dictionary and open up novel perspectives and directions for future research.

Becoming Shakespeare begins where most Shakespeare stories end―with his death in 1616―and relates the fascinating story of his unlikely transformation from provincial playwright to universal Bard. Unlike later literary giants, Shakespeare created no stir when he died. Though he'd once had a string of hit plays, he had been retired in the country for six years, and only his family, friends, and business partners seemed to care that he was gone. Within a few years he was nearly forgotten. And when London's theaters were shut down in 1642, he seemed destined for oblivion. With the Restoration in 1660, though, the theaters were open once again, and Shakespeare began his long ascent: No longer merely one playwright among many, he became the transcendent genius at the heart of English culture. Fifty years after the Restoration scholars began taking him seriously. Fifty years after that he was considered England's greatest genius. And by 1800 he was practically divine. Jack Lynch vividly chronicles Shakespeare's afterlife―from the revival of his plays to the decades when his work was co-opted and "improved" by politicians and other playwrights, and culminating with the "Bardolatry" of the Stratford celebration of Shakespeare's three-hundredth birthday in 1864. Becoming Shakespeare is not only essential reading for anyone intrigued by Shakespeare, but it also offers a consideration of the vagaries of fame.

Updated and expanded from one of the most popular grammar sites on the web, this book provides a modern guide to English usage for the 21st century. With topics arranged alphabetically and written in an enjoyable and readable tone, The English Language: A User’s Guide will help students and writers understand the nature of the language, explaining the 'why' of the rules as well as what constitutes good grammar and style. Going beyond the prescriptive wrong /right examples, Jack Lynch includes examples of weak/strong, good/better, disputed/preferred, and informal/formal usage.

This memoir, written by a Junior Varsity oarsman from the class of 1963, relates how a squad of unathletic kids at a non jock school carrying the normal heavy academic work load that all MIT students carry somehow managed to live up to a legendary sprint and in their senior year became the "lightweight crew to beat." In the telling of the story we catch a glimpse of what life at MIT is like as well as see how competitive intercollegiate athletics can be integrated with serious academic studies.

In the first extended treatment of the debates surrounding public deception in eighteenth-century Britain, Jack Lynch contends that forgery, fakery, and fraud make explicit the usually unspoken grounds on which Britons made sense of their world. Confrontations with inauthenticity, in other words, bring tacitly understood conceptions of reality to the surface. Drawing on a wide range of contemporary print and manuscript sources”not only books and pamphlets, but ballads, comic prints, legal proceedings, letters, and diaries”Lynch focuses on the debates they provoked, rather than the forgers themselves. He offers a comprehensive treatment of the criticism surrounding fraud in most of the noteworthy controversies of the long eighteenth century. To this end, his study is structured around topics related to the arguments over deception in Britain, whether they concerned George Psalmanazar's Formosan hoax at the beginning of the eighteenth century or William Henry Ireland's Shakespearean imposture at the end. Beginning with the question of what constitutes deception and ending with an illuminating chapter on what was at stake in these debates for eighteenth-century British thinkers, Lynch's accessibly written study takes the reader through the means”whether simple, sophisticated, or tortuously argued”by which partisans on both sides struggled to define which of the apparent contradictions were sufficient to disqualify a claim to authenticity. Fakery, Lynch persuasively argues, transports us to the heart of eighteenth-century notions of the value of evidence, of the mechanisms of perception and memory, of the relationship between art and life, of historicism, and of human motivation.

In its long history, the English language has had many lawmakers--those who have tried to regulate or otherwise organize the way we speak. The Lexicographer's Dilemma offers the first narrative history of these endeavors and shows clearly that what we now regard as the only "correct" way to speak emerged out of specific historical and social conditions over the course of centuries. As historian Jack Lynch has discovered, every rule has a human history and the characters peopling his narrative are as interesting for their obsession as for their erudition: the sharp-tongued satirist Jonathan Swift, who called for a government-sponsored academy to issue rulings on the language; the polymath Samuel Johnson, who put dictionaries on a new footing; the eccentric Hebraist Robert Lowth, the first modern to understand the workings of biblical poetry; the crackpot linguist John Horne Tooke, whose bizarre theories continue to baffle scholars; the chemist and theologian Joseph Priestly, whose political radicalism prompted violent riots; the ever-crotchety Noah Webster, who worked to Americanize the English language; the long-bearded lexicographer James A. H. Murray, who devoted his life to a survey of the entire language in the Oxford English Dictionary; and the playwright George Bernard Shaw, who worked without success to make English spelling rational. Grammatical "rules" or "laws" are not like the law of gravity, or even laws against murder and theft--they're more like rules of etiquette, made by fallible people and subject to change. Witty, smart, full of passion for the world's language, The Lexicograher's Dilemma will entertain and educate in equal measure.

If you've ever worked at a job you never dreamed you'd do, you're in good company—historically speaking. Isaac Newton created counterfeit-proof coins, Daniel Defoe made bricks, William Faulkner sold stamps, Hedy Lamarr conquered random radio-frequency signals. They are among the 50 luminaries spanning 22 centuries that Jack Lynch profiles in our Levenger Press book, Don't Quit Your Day Job. The takeaway? Doing what you must can often make you better at doing what you love. And doing what you can is sometimes the path to doing what you dream you can. As one of the famous 50 said, “Medicine is my lawful wife, literature is my mistress.” (Dr. Anton Chekhov.) With very cool illustrations and a treasury of “who knew?”

"Knowledge is of two kinds," said Samuel Johnson in 1775. "We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it." Today we think of Wikipedia as the source of all information, the ultimate reference. Yet it is just the latest in a long line of aggregated knowledge--reference works that have shaped the way we've seen the world for centuries. You Could Look It Up chronicles the captivating stories behind these great works and their contents, and the way they have influenced each other. From The Code of Hammurabi , the earliest known compendium of laws in ancient Babylon almost two millennia before Christ to Pliny's Natural History ; from the 11th-century Domesday Book recording land holdings in England to Abraham Ortelius's first atlas of the world; from Samuel Johnson's A Dictionary of the English Language to The Whole Earth Catalog to Google, Jack Lynch illuminates the human stories and accomplishment behind each, as well as its enduring impact on civilization. In the process, he offers new insight into the value of knowledge.

In the most comprehensive and up-to-date overview of the poetry published in Britain between the Restoration and the end of the eighteenth century, forty-four authorities from six countries survey the poetry of the age in all its richness and diversity--serious and satirical, public and private, by men and women, nobles and peasants, whether published in deluxe editions or sung on the streets. The contributors discuss poems in social contexts, poetic identities, poetic subjects, poetic form, poetic genres, poetic devices, and criticism. Even experts in eighteenth-century poetry will see familiar poems from new angles, and all readers will encounter poems they've never read before. The book is not a chronologically organized literary history, nor an encyclopaedia, nor a collection of thematically related essays; rather it is an attempt to provide a systematic overview of these poetic works, and to restore it to a position of centrality in modern criticism.