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Loading... Almoran and Hamet: An Oriental Tale (edition 1761)by John Hawkesworth (Author)
Work InformationAlmoran and Hamet: An Oriental Tale by John Hawkesworth
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. This fronts like it's gonna be a golden mean tale about the temperament of the prince and the ship of state, and the conceit of busting said prince into two inverse-image brothers is kind of cute (and setting it in Persia for no reason other than then genies ("Geniuses") can do all the plot stuff with their magic and also Persia was big was kinda pointless, but better than cruel-despotate orientalism). But then everyone's gotta give their little speeches that end with a lesson, and it turns out to be less about the state and more about bodyswitching and a weird love triangle that could have gone on just the same way with genies if nobody was a king at all, and it's kind of fun at the end to try to keep track of who said what to whom wearing whose face and what that means for what who said to whom wearing whose other face, but that's not the fun of literature, per se, more the fun of a good Diplomacy game or such. I understand Hawkesworth is best known for being a hanger-on of Sam Johnson who somehow got the contract from the Admiralty to edit Captain Cook's diaries and got a big advance and everyone was jealous but then did such a shit job (redacting all the parts he thought were boring, applying a weird consistency of tone over Cook's diaries and those of his botanist Banks like one guy did them both, adding great swathes of his own stuff (including Adventures! Fake-news ones!), and picking an extended, technical, and tedious theological argument with Cook in the introduction about whether God would want them to name a channel "The Providential Channel," and then everyone hated him, and I read this book and I think yeah, that's this guy, this is a book written by a guy who thinks he's way better than he is. ( ) no reviews | add a review
Almoran and Hamet is an Oriental tale in two volumes, which was first of all drafted as a play. The author John Hawkesworth was an English writer, born in London. He is said to have been clerk to an attorney, and was certainly self-educated. In 1744 he succeeded Samuel Johnson as compiler of the parliamentary debates for the Gentleman's Magazine, and from 1746 to 1749 he contributed poems signed Greville, or H. Greville, to that journal. In company with Johnson and others he started a periodical called The Adventurer, which ran to 140 numbers, of which 70 were from the pen of Hawkesworth himself. On account of what was regarded as its powerful defence of morality and religion, Hawkesworth was rewarded by the archbishop of Canterbury with the degree of LL.D. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)823.69Literature English & Old English literatures English fiction Later 18th century 1745-1800 Minor writersLC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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