Overview

Sir William Jones (1746-94) was the foremost Orientalist of his generation and one of the greatest intellectual navigators of all time. He re-drew the map of European thought. 'Orientalist' Jones was an extraordinary man and an intensely colourful figure. At the age of twenty-six, Jones was elected to Dr Johnson's Literary Club, on terms of intimacy with the metropolitan luminaries of the day. The names of his friends in Britain and India present a roll-call of late eighteenth-century glitterati: Samuel Johnson and James Boswell, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Benjamin Franklin, Joseph Priestley, Edmund Burke, Warren Hastings, Johannes Zoffany, Edward Gibbon, Oliver Goldsmith, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Charles James Fox, William Pitt, and David Garrick. In Bengal his Sanskrit researches marked the beginning of Indo-European comparative grammar, and modern comparative-historical linguistics, of Indology, and the disciplines of comparative literature, philology, mythology, and law. He did more than any other writer to destroy Eurocentric prejudice, reshaping Western perceptions of India and the Orient. His commitment to the translation of culture, a multiculturalism fascinated as much by similitude as difference, profoundly influenced European and British Romanticism, offering the West disconcerting new relationships and disorienting orientations. Jones's translation of the Hindu myth of Sakuntala (1789) led to an Oriental renaissance in the West and cultural revolution in India. Remembered with great affection throughout the subcontinent as a man who facilitated India's cultural assimilation into the modern world, Jones helped to build India's future on the immensity, sophistication, and pluralism of its past. Michael J. Franklin's extensive archival research reveals new insights into this radical intellectual: a figure characterized by Goethe as 'a far-seeing man, he seeks to connect the unknown to the known', and described by Dr Johnson as 'the most enlightened of the sons of men'. Unpublished poems and new letters shed fresh light upon Jones in rare moments of relaxation, while Franklin's research of the legal documents in the courts of the King's Bench, the Carmarthen circuit, and the Supreme Court of Bengal illustrates his passion for social justice, his legal acumen, and his principled independence.

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Reviews

Michael Franklin has written the definitive biography of this most polymathic of men, moving with ease between the many facets of his remarkable mind. James Mather, The Spectator [A] readable and thorough biography...of one of the greatest polymaths in history Andrew Robinson, The Independent

Michael Franklin has written the definitive biography of this most polymathic of men, moving with ease between the many facets of his remarkable mind. James Mather, The Spectator [A] readable and thorough biography...of one of the greatest polymaths in history Andrew Robinson, The Independent Michael Franklin has absorbed a lot of the gravitas and scholarly attention to detail of his chosen subject. Robert Irwin, Literary Review

All in all, this is an excellent biography of an extraordinary eighteenth-century intellectual ... the author has succeeded in giving a very lively portrait of a man with a fascinating personality, and the book offers the right balance between detailed and accurate factual information, a sensitive psychological interpretation of William Jones the man, and a clear exposition of the importance of his contribution to linguistics and Orientalism. Pierre Dubois, Graat ... intelligent and stimulating ... This is a splendid book - in the richness of its research and the depth of its empathy, in the subtle delineation of William Jones's character and the diligent unravelling of a multi-faceted subject. David Arnold, Times Literary Supplement Michael Franklin has written the definitive biography of this most polymathic of men, moving with ease between the many facets of his remarkable mind. James Mather, The Spectator [A] readable and thorough biography...of one of the greatest polymaths in history Andrew Robinson, The Independent Michael Franklin has absorbed a lot of the gravitas and scholarly attention to detail of his chosen subject. Robert Irwin, Literary Review well worth reading John Brockington, Translation and Literature dynamic and definitive biography ... Franklin's portrait of Jones as a radical, republican mediator of hitherto disparate cultures is long overdue Kurt A. Johnson, The Review of English Studies Franklin's new biography of Jones goes much further than previous biographies ... in relating his career and his intellectual ambitions to the social and political circumstances of his time. [It] brings out many new biographical and critical insights into Jones's work and career William Crawley, Asian Affairs [an] admirable and engrossing biography. The India Site Michael Franklin has written an engaging, sympathetic, and definitive new scholarly biography of the first great British orientalist, Sir William Jones ... an impressive achievement Peter J. Kitson, Wordsworth Circle

Author Information

Michael J. Franklin is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of English at Swansea University. His main current area of interest is the study of colonial representations of India and their various interfaces with Romanticism, and he has published widely on this subject and on the work of Sir William Jones, including the critical biography Sir William Jones (1995), and (as editor)Sir William Jones: Selected Poetical and Prose Works (1995), Representing India: Indian Culture and Imperial Control (2000), and The European Discovery of India: Key Indological Sources of Romanticism (2001). His most recent books are an edited collection of essays, Romantic Representations of British India (2006), and a scholarly edition of Phebe Gibbes, Hartly House, Calcutta (2007), also published by Oxford University Press.

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