
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
About this book
First published in 1995, David Nokes' major biography of John Gay (1685-1732) was the first full-length life of Gay for over fifty years, and drew on hitherto unpublished letters. Presenting Gay as a complex character, torn between the hopes of court preferment and the assertion of literary independence, Nokes offers both a lively and accessible read for the non-specialist and a comprehensive scholarly study.
Best-known for
The Beggar's Opera, Gay is here revealed as a contradictory figure. Nokes argues that Gay's self-effacing and self-mocking literary persona was largely responsible for perpetuating an image of himself as a genial literary non-entity. Often cast as a neglected genius, dependent on others, he in fact left a considerable fortune after his death. Depicted by his friends as both a childlike innocent and a rakish ladies' man, he produced the most successful and subversive theatrical satire of his generation, and volumes of bestselling
Fables.
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Information
Table of contents
- Cover
- Landing Page
- Title Page
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- Preface
- Contents
- Lost of Illustrations
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- PART I: Trading Places
- PART II: The Modes of the Court
- PART III: A Free Man
- Epilogue
- Appendix: Unpublished and Uncollected Letters
- Select Bibliography
- Index
- Plates
- Copyright