This section contains 12,234 words (approx. 41 pages at 300 words per page) |
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on Joseph Addison
Biography Essay
Nathan Drake keened in 1805 that Joseph Addison for all his literary achievement and "moral dominion" frustrated biographers, who stood helpless before his reticence and distrust of self-revelation. Time and scholarship have not made the private individual more accessible. The Letters of Joseph Addison, for example, scrupulously gathered and edited by Walter Graham for publication in 1941, exposed a cinematic "Thin Man," a largely nonexistent personality clothed and bewigged. Almost as if his personal papers had been censored, not a single piece of correspondence between him and his family has been preserved. Peter Smithers's second edition of a full-scale biography (1968) unearthed few significant clues to Addisonian uniqueness. Only surface details about the public figure, who apparently forfeited depth for appearance and impact, have been perpetuated.
A melange of paradoxes, he made his artistic life fuel his political career so that a rapid symbiotic association developed between artistry and...
This section contains 12,234 words (approx. 41 pages at 300 words per page) |
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