Wednesday 6 February 2013 at 18:25
Marvin Spevack introduces the Curiosities of Literature, the epic cornucopia of essays on all things literary by Isaac D’Israeli: a scholar, man of letters and father of British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli. What may be most curious about Isaac D’Israeli’s Curiosities of Literature is the title itself. For D’Israeli curiosity was a blend of the original denotation, “investigation … characterized by special care,” and that of his own day, “inquisitive, desirous of information,” as in his reference to the grammar in Johnson’s Dictionary as being “curiously illustrated by the notes and researches of modern editors” and his regarding his friend Francis Douce’s library as being “curious”. Suitably for D’Israeli, the man of letters, literature meant even more than just “literature generally, the humanities”; it meant knowledge in the widest sense, without formality and restriction. A collection of essays, Curiosities of Literature – as the full title of the first edition of 1791 makes explicit, Consisting of Anecdotes, Characters, Sketches, and Observations, Literary, Critical, and Historical – has been rightly called “that library in miniature”. It is a library which evolved through a vigorously evolutionary process – a veritable sea change of selection, addition, omission, and revision – its fourteenth and [...]
Source: http://publicdomainreview.org/2013/02/06/the-curious-world-of-isaac-disraeli/