Talk:Letter to Chesterfield

"Carlyle's Biography of Johnson"

The article cited "Carlyle's Biography of Johnson", but links to an early version of the Fraser's magazine essay stretched to book-length long after Carlyle's death. Most editions of Carlyle's work discusses this piece as one of the "Fraser's Magazine's Essays" despite its long length, and was originally comissioned to Carlyle as a long review of a new edition of Boswell's Life of Johnson. I know this is nitpicking, but I thought this needed to be cleared up, if nothing else, to distinguish it from Carlyle's later writings on Johnson (especially from the long lecture in "On Heroes and Hero-Worship") and for that matter, his very very long biographies (for example, the six-volume on Freidrich the Great, or the biographies of John Sterling or Cromwell).--Artimaean (talk) 20:42, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

Magna Carta

'...still stands as the Magna Carta of the modern author, the public announcement that the days of courtly letters were at last ended, that the author was the true source of his work and that he and it were no longer dependent on patron or the social system he represented.'

The writer of any work can remain independent of everything and everyone only if the writer is able to meet self-upkeep costs and/or defray the costs of publication. Once the writer enlists the support of another person(s), a chain of dependency is created, which the writer can try to minimize but is unlikely to remove, unless the foregoing conditions are met.

Bravado terms such as Magna Carta and Declaration of Independence are relatively meaningless here Pamour (talk) 17:32, 23 May 2017 (UTC).

Hear, hear. Johnson was bludgeoning, as was his wont, someone guilty of cant and hypocrisy.

Chesterfield was trying to climb up and piggy-back on Johnson’s new fame. He was like those literary agents of our times who approach a newly emerged author, after that writer’s usual 20 years of lonely struggle, and try to blood-suck their success. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 101.174.103.205 (talk) 08:47, 1 January 2021 (UTC)

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