SOURCE: "The Real Thomas Amory," in Essays and Studies, Vol. XXVI, 1940, pp. 45-72.

In the following essay, Esdaile offers an autobiographical interpretation of The Life of John Buncle, Esq.

Readers of Lamb and Hazlitt know the name of John Buncle; his author, Thomas Amory (1691-1788), is ignored in no serious history of eighteenth-century literature and has his place in the D.N.B.; yet no one has troubled to disinter from his pages the autobiographical fragments which, as Leslie Stephen saw, are embedded in it, or to check his references to notable Englishmen or his reactions to the people and to literature of his own day. As his writings are the reflection of his own vivid personality, as his wildest adventures reflect his dreams if not invariably his experiences, it is worth while to attempt a full-length portrait, remembering that his own son equated Amory with his hero...