Peter Martin | |
---|---|
Born | 1940 (age 82–83) Buenos Aires, Argentina [1] |
Nationality | Argentina, United States, England, Spain |
Education | Principia College (1962), Syracuse University (2020) |
Occupation(s) | Historian, biographer, English literature scholar |
Known for | English literature scholar |
Peter Martin (born 1940) is an English literature scholar, biographer, and an 18th century garden historian. He was educated and has taught in the United States. He lives in England and Spain.
Martin has been a professor at Miami University; [2] the College of William & Mary; [3] New England College in Arundale, West Sussex, England; [3] and in the English department of Principia College (1993–2002). [4] [5] For several years, he was a garden historian for the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. [3] [6] [5]
He has written several books on historical and biographical topics, including Samuel Johnson: A Biography, A Life of James Boswell, and about Edmond Malone. [7] His has written about gardens and gardening in Williamsburg and Colonial Virginia, including British and American Gardens in the Eighteenth Century, [6] The Gardening World of Alexander Pope and Pursuing Innocent Pleasures. [8] He also created 'the dictionary wars' in American lexicography [7] and A Dog Called Perth about the 21-year relationship with his dog. [5]
Martin was born and lived in Argentina until the age of ten. He is a 1962 graduate of the Principia College in Elsah, Illinois. [5] He has lived in a village in Sussex, England and El Campello, Spain. [5]
Samuel Johnson, often called Dr Johnson, was an English writer who made lasting contributions as a poet, playwright, essayist, moralist, critic, biographer, editor, and lexicographer. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography calls him "arguably the most distinguished man of letters in English history".
James Boswell, 9th Laird of Auchinleck, was a Scottish biographer, diarist, and lawyer, born in Edinburgh. He is best known for his biography of his friend and older contemporary the English writer Samuel Johnson, which is commonly said to be the greatest biography written in the English language. A great mass of Boswell's diaries, letters and private papers were recovered from the 1920s to the 1950s, and their ongoing publication by Yale University has transformed his reputation.
The Colony of Virginia, chartered in 1606 and settled in 1607, was the first enduring English colony in North America, following failed attempts at settlement on Newfoundland by Sir Humphrey Gilbert in 1583 and the Roanoke Colony by Sir Walter Raleigh in the late 1580s.
John Cleland was an English novelist best known for his fictional Fanny Hill: or, the Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, whose eroticism led to his arrest. James Boswell called him "a sly, old malcontent".
The House of Burgesses was the elected representative element of the Virginia General Assembly, the legislative body of the Colony of Virginia. With the creation of the House of Burgesses in 1642, the General Assembly, which had been established in 1619, became a bicameral institution.
The Founding Fathers of the United States, commonly referred to simply as the Founding Fathers or Founders, were a group of late-18th-century American revolutionary leaders who united the Thirteen Colonies, oversaw the War of Independence from Great Britain, established the United States, and crafted a framework of government for the new nation.
The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. (1791) by James Boswell is a biography of English writer Dr. Samuel Johnson. The work was from the beginning a critical and popular success, and represents a landmark in the development of the modern genre of biography. It is notable for its extensive reports of Johnson's conversation. Many have called it the greatest biography written in English, but some modern critics object that the work cannot be considered a proper biography. Boswell's personal acquaintance with his subject began in 1763, when Johnson was 54 years old, and Boswell covered the entirety of Johnson's life by means of additional research. The biography takes many critical liberties with Johnson's life, as Boswell makes various changes to Johnson's quotations and even censors many comments. Nonetheless, the book is valued as both an important source of information on Johnson and his times, as well as an important work of literature.
Ullinish is a crofting township on Loch Bracadale, on the southwest coast of Skye, Scotland. The only promontory fort on Skye is located at Ullinish. It is situated to the west of Struan and just south of the hamlet of Ebost. Historically, Ullinish is associated with the MacLeod family. Of literary note, Samuel Johnson's views and denunciation of James Macpherson's Ossian were confirmed while Johnson was in Ullinish.
Principia Ethica is a 1903 book by the British philosopher G. E. Moore, in which the author insists on the indefinability of "good" and provides an exposition of the naturalistic fallacy. Principia Ethica was influential, and Moore's arguments were long regarded as path-breaking advances in moral philosophy, though they have been seen as less impressive and durable than his contributions in other fields.
The Marshall Court refers to the Supreme Court of the United States from 1801 to 1835, when John Marshall served as the fourth Chief Justice of the United States. Marshall served as Chief Justice until his death, at which point Roger Taney took office. The Marshall Court played a major role in increasing the power of the judicial branch, as well as the power of the national government.
Samuel Derrick (1724–1769) was an Irish author. He became known as a hack writer in London, where he gained wide literary connections.
Samuel Johnson: A Life is a prize-winning biography of 18th-century English lexicographer Samuel Johnson by British literary critic David Nokes. It was published on October 27, 2009, shortly before the author's death. Building on earlier work by scholars Robert DeMaria, Walter Jackson Bate, Lawrence Lipking and Peter Martin, many critics lauded Samuel Johnson: A Life as a significant step forward in Johnsonian biography and criticism. In the biography, Nokes challenges James Boswell's significance in Dr. Johnson's life, writing that "Johnson wished to keep...his acknowledged biographer at a distance" and even second-guessed his "annointment" of Boswell as his official biographer.
William Johnson Temple (1739–1796) was an English cleric and essayist, now remembered as a correspondent of James Boswell.
An Account of Corsica is the earliest piece of writing related to the Grand Tour literature that was written by the Scottish author James Boswell. Its first and second editions were published in 1768, with a third edition within twelve months. The full title given to the journal is An account of Corsica, the journal of a tour to that island and memoirs of Pascal Paoli.
Jean Skipwith, Lady Skipwith was a Virginia plantation owner and manager who is noted for her extensive garden, botanical manuscript notes, and library. At the time of her death, her library was perhaps the largest existing library assembled by a woman.
Catherine M. Kerrison is an American historian, and professor of history at Villanova University. Her work examines the role and life of American women, with the assistance of primary sources, oral history and written biographies.
Boswell: Citizen of the World, Man of Letters is a 1995 anthology of scholarly essays on the Scottish biographer and diarist James Boswell, edited by Irma S. Lustig.
Edmund Rossingham was the nephew of and factor or agent for Sir George Yeardley, who was Governor of the Colony of Virginia, three times between November 1616 and November 1627, and his wife Temperance Flowerdew. Rossingham was a member of the first assembly of the Virginia House of Burgesses at Jamestown, Virginia in 1619 for Flowerdew Hundred Plantation, Yeardley's plantation.
Bibliography of early American publishers and printers is a selection of books, journals and other publications devoted to these topics covering their careers and other activities before, during and just after the American Revolution. Various works that are not primarily devoted to those topics, but whose content devotes itself to them in significant measure, are sometimes included here also. Works about Benjamin Franklin, a famous printer and publisher, among other things, are too numerous to list in this bibliography, can be found at Bibliography of Benjamin Franklin, and are generally not included here unless they are greatly devoted to Franklin's printing career. Single accounts of printers and publishers that occur in encyclopedia articles are neither included here.
Martin's is not the first biography to make use of the Yale archive. Boswell's earlier and later careers were written up by Frederick A. Pottle and Frank Brady, in two densely documented, though readable, works of record. This new life of James Boswell makes available to nonscholarly readers a vivid and sensitively observed narrative that takes account of the full range of new information.
In conveying a picture of this constant wavering, Martin's treatment of his material is dextrous and assured, and he offers a refreshingly ambiguous portrait of his subject.