Public and private morality as focus in writings of Samuel Johnson
 
Given Samuel Johnson’s lifelong concern with problems of human morality, it is not surprising—in an age when such writers as Defoe, Swift, Pope, Goldsmith, and Burke were highly politically conscious—to find Johnson frequently turning to matters of both public and private morality.
 
Donald J. Greene presents a collection of Johnson’s writings with a political emphasis: his early anti-Walpolian pamphlets Marmor Norfolciense and A Complete Vindication of the Licensers of the Stage, and various journalistic squibs; an abridgment of the debate on the offer of the Crown to Oliver Cromwell; the articles on the Seven Years’ War and related matters, such as the notorious trial and execution of Admiral Byng; and the four pamphlets of the 1770s—The False Alarm, Thoughts on . . . Falkland’s Islands, The Patriot, and Taxation No Tyranny. An introduction addresses Johnson’s politics, and full annotation provides historical context.