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    Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia
    Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia
    Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia
    Audiobook5 hours

    Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia

    Written by Samuel Johnson

    Narrated by LibriVox Community

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    About this audiobook

    In this enchanting fable (subtitled The Choice of Life), Rasselas and his retinue burrow their way out of the totalitarian paradise of the Happy Valley in search of that triad of eighteenth-century aspiration - life, liberty and happiness.

    According to that quirky authority, James Boswell, Johnson penned his only work of prose fiction in a handful of days to cover the cost of his mother's funeral. The stylistic elegance of the book and its wide-rangingphilosophical concerns give no hint of haste or superficiality.

    Among other still burning issues Johnson's characters pursue questions of education, colonialism, the nature of the soul and even climate alteration.
    Johnson's profoundest concern, however, is with the alternating attractions of solitude and social participation, seen not only as the ultimate life-choice but as the arena in which are played out the deepest fears of the individual: "Of the uncertainties of our present state, the most dreadful and alarming is the uncertain continuance of Reason.” (Summary by Martin Geeson)

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherLibriVox
    Release dateAug 25, 2014
    Author

    Samuel Johnson

    Samuel Johnson (1709 – 1784) was an English writer – a poet, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer. His works include the biography The Life of Richard Savage, an influential annotated edition of Shakespeare's plays, and the widely read tale Rasselas, the massive and influential Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets, and most notably, A Dictionary of the English Language, the definitive British dictionary of its time.

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