The History of Rasselas: Prince of Abissinia (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780486440941)

Simply written, funny, and compulsively readable, this fine little book has been heralded as one of the finest examples of English prose and offers a compelling glimpse of Samuel Johnson's moral views. Dashed out over the course of a single week to pay for his mother's funeral, Johnson's only novel was the outcome of a lifetime's thoughts and experiences.
A philosophical romance tracing the pilgrimage of an African prince and his companions to Egypt, Rasselas ponders a number of subjects -- romantic love, flights of imagination, the great discoveries of science, and speculations about the meaning of happiness -- all of which, Johnson implies, encourage man with false hopes and unrealistic estimates of what life has to offer.
Directed specifically against eighteenth-century optimism and, more generally, against all simple formulas for achieving happiness, Rasselas has often been compared with Voltaire's Candide -- which was published only a few weeks before Johnson's work. Both novels have deservedly attained the status of classics.

Author: Samuel Johnson
ISBN-10: 048644094X
ISBN-13: 9780486440941
Publisher: Dover Publications
Language: English
Published: 03/04/2005
Pages: 99
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.27lbs
Size: 8.42h x 5.56w x 0.27d