The History Of Rasselas: Prince Of Abissinia
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Wear and tear with damage
Pages: Good
Markings: Previous owner
What begins as a prince's restless flight from paradise becomes one of the most searching philosophical meditations in the English literary canon. Samuel Johnson's The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia chronicles the journey of a young Ethiopian prince who escapes the luxurious but suffocating Happy Valley alongside his sister Nekayah and the poet Imlac, embarking on a quest across Egypt and beyond in search of the true secret to human happiness. Written with Johnson's characteristic moral gravity and elegant irony, the narrative unfolds as a series of encounters and dialogues that systematically dismantle every proposed formula for contentment — from the pastoral life to philosophy, from marriage to solitude. First published in 1759, this deceptively slim tale stands as a cornerstone of Enlightenment prose fiction, drawing favourable comparison with Voltaire's Candide, which appeared the same year. Johnson's style is magisterial and aphoristic, each sentence weighted with hard-won wisdom and a scepticism that never tips into cynicism. This Oxford University Press edition, edited with an introduction by Geoffrey Tillotson and Brian Jenkins, presents the text with scholarly apparatus that illuminates both its historical context and its enduring relevance. For a work written in the grief of a single week to pay for a mother's funeral, its depth of insight into the restless human condition is nothing short of astonishing — leaving the reader to wonder whether Rasselas ever truly finds what he is looking for, or whether the search itself is the only honest answer.
Author: Samuel Johnson
Format: Hardback
Published: 1971, Oxford University Press
Genre: Classic fiction
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Wear and tear with damage
Pages: Good
Markings: Previous owner
What begins as a prince's restless flight from paradise becomes one of the most searching philosophical meditations in the English literary canon. Samuel Johnson's The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia chronicles the journey of a young Ethiopian prince who escapes the luxurious but suffocating Happy Valley alongside his sister Nekayah and the poet Imlac, embarking on a quest across Egypt and beyond in search of the true secret to human happiness. Written with Johnson's characteristic moral gravity and elegant irony, the narrative unfolds as a series of encounters and dialogues that systematically dismantle every proposed formula for contentment — from the pastoral life to philosophy, from marriage to solitude. First published in 1759, this deceptively slim tale stands as a cornerstone of Enlightenment prose fiction, drawing favourable comparison with Voltaire's Candide, which appeared the same year. Johnson's style is magisterial and aphoristic, each sentence weighted with hard-won wisdom and a scepticism that never tips into cynicism. This Oxford University Press edition, edited with an introduction by Geoffrey Tillotson and Brian Jenkins, presents the text with scholarly apparatus that illuminates both its historical context and its enduring relevance. For a work written in the grief of a single week to pay for a mother's funeral, its depth of insight into the restless human condition is nothing short of astonishing — leaving the reader to wonder whether Rasselas ever truly finds what he is looking for, or whether the search itself is the only honest answer.