Title
Completion of a Book on Eighteenth-Century Literary Fraud and an Edition of A Reply to Clark’s Answer (1782) by William Shaw and Samuel Johnson
Document Type
Grant Proposal
Date Accepted
Spring 2007
Project Description/Abstract
A Faculty Grant and Summer Stipend would fund research in the British Isles and a month of scholarship at Harvard, Yale, and Brown Universities to finish my book, National Culture Wars in Imperial Great Britain: Samuel Johnson, Ossian, and the Celtic Revival, for Penn State University Press. I am also invited to publish a major article on the subject in The Age of Johnson: A Scholarly Annual, ed. Jack Lynch. Having completed six chapters, I must focus in Chapter 7 on the forgotten friendship of Johnson and William Shaw in debunking the foremost fraud in literary history, namely, the bogus Ossian poetry of 1760-73. Also, for Chapter 8 I must prepare the first annotated edition of their rare pamphlet, A Reply to Clark’s Answer (1782). Thus, your grant will help to make public a lost historical episode and an unknown writing about the controversy involving one of the greatest English authors.
Recommended Citation
Curley, Thomas M. (2007). Completion of a Book on Eighteenth-Century Literary Fraud and an Edition of A Reply to Clark’s Answer (1782) by William Shaw and Samuel Johnson. Faculty and Librarian Research Grants (FLRG). Item 68.
https://vc.bridgew.edu/flrg_grant/68