Before starting this book, I had begun reading the better known "Dr. Johnson's London" by Liza Picard. But as an American reader, I became frustrated. For example, Ms. Picard refers to prices in terms of "d." [6 d. etc.] I suppose that any British reader knows that the "d." stand for, but I was wondering, "Pound? Quid? Shilling?" Schwartz specifically explains that 4 farthings = 1 penny, which is abbreviated as "d."
Ms Picard is British, and assumes that the reader knows many other incidentals that American readers may not know. Half way through that book, I turned to this one instead. Perhaps because Richard Schwartz is American, his book is more accessible for "Yanks." His writing is lucid, yet this short book is crammed with fascinating details about 19th century English life. It includes such specifics as the fact that wigs were greased before being powdered, and that insects infested the wigs! There are countless other similarly specific details. For example, Schwartz is specific about what 19th century folk spent on various items, even comparing the prices of traveling by coach vs. wagon etc.
Now that I have finished reading this marvellous introduction to the era, I will go back and finish reading Picard's "Dr. Johnson's London" and will hopefully get more out of it.

es un libro muy didáctico, con un contenido secuencial apropiado y con la información requerida por todo profesional para racionalizar sus procedimientos operatorios. lo considero excelente; por esa razón es el libro de texto guia en los seminarios de biomateriales y operatoria en los programas de posgrado de la facultad de odontología de la Universidad de Antioquia

One can hear the last remaining explosions over the literary and academic landscape. After twenty years the battle is finally coming to an end: the French deconstructionists are at last packing up their word processors and going home. Like all wars, this so-called "cultural war" was pointless, fuelled by ivory tower academics in fear of losing tenure - at least this is the reason given by American academic, Richard Schwartz, in his curious book, ~ After the Death of Literature~.

Schwartze notes that the Cultural Wars of the eighties and nineties are over and that literature, as a subject and artform, has the task of reconstructing itself from the ruins created by traditionalists and, later, post-structuralists. In pursuit of this task, he constructs a foundation in which literature, as a subject of critical theory, might rise from the ashes like a phoenix after a 500 year slumber. Schwartz uses the eighteenth century critic, scholar, lexicographer, poet and man of letters, Samuel Johnson, as his model for this new literary view. According to Schwartz, the true Johnsonian critic sees literature "as part of the totality of human experience and...resist(s) the temptation of narrow focus and narrow specialization." Schwartz believes that this has been a major problem with the subject of literature within the academic domain: we have become too theoritical and specialized, thus analysing the subject of literature out of existence. The excesseses of "literary theory" in the last thirty-five years have, to a greater or lesser degree, taken our focus off literature's purpose as an artform - to broaden and deepen human endeavor on issues such as "love and hate, hope and memory, the individual and society and dozens of others of equally high importance."

In so many words, the critic has become king and the artist, the writer and the poet have been relegated to the status of second class citizen.

This book is another attempt (and a successful one) at French 'critical theory' bashing. Having just read Camille Paglia's, ~Art, Sex and American Culture~ (see my review) both texts are quite similar on the subject: Schwartz is much more sedate, however, Paglia gives it to them (French academics and their cronies) with both barrels.

Generally, the conclusion of this important book is, that, in order for literature to survive and develop as an academic subject and art form, the specialized academics must come down from their ivory towers and make the subject accessible to all. Otherwise literature could possibly specialize itself into oblivion.

If you are interested in the "Cultural Wars" that rampaged through out academia in America and Australia in the last two decades of the twentieth century, you'll find this book curious and interesting. The Johnsonian model for literary study that Schartze proposes is also worthwhile.