Melancholy and Literary Biography, 1640-1816

Jane Darcy teaches English at University College London, UK, where she held a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship.

• Introduction PART I: JOHNSON, MELANCHOLY AND EARLY LITERARY BIOGRAPHY, 1640-1791 1. Early Literary Biographies: Walton's Donne to Sprat's Cowley 2. Johnson, Melancholy and Biography 3. Eighteenth-century Melancholy: Boswell and Cheyne, The English Malady PART II: MELANCHOLY AND BIOGRAPHICAL EXPERIMENTATION AROUND 1800 4. Philosophical Biography (1): Godwin's Memoirs of Mary Wollstonecraft 5. Philosophical Biography (2): Currie's Life of Burns 6. Religious Melancholy: Hayley's Life of Cowper Conclusion Notes Bibliography

'One of the highlights of the book is the originality of its examination of religious melancholy in the period and how biographers negotiated the politics of this potentially explosive issue. It is refreshing to see work on melancholy give such scope to this important contemporary issue... Melancholy and Literary Biography, 1640-1816 provides a valuable examination of the ways in which eighteenth-century biographers depict literary figures and demonstrates how significant the impact could be when they veered away from the poetic melancholy of sensibility. As such, Darcy's book is a welcome contribution to recent scholarship on the genre of literary biography and the posthumous publication of literary letters.' Anita O'Connell, The BARS Review