The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia

In The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia, Samuel Johnson offers a satire work first published in 1759. At its center are folly, hypocrisy, power, and the distance between ideals and behavior, developed through the conventions and freedoms of satire. Rather than depending on topical novelty, the book builds its interest through the interaction of character, situation, and idea. The book’s distinctive character comes from a sharp style that uses irony, exaggeration, and comic contrast to expose serious problems. At roughly 37,929 words with a fairly difficult reading profile, it offers a reading commitment that is easy to judge before beginning while still leaving room for close attention. Readers still return to it because of its ability to make criticism memorable through wit. It remains worth reading for the precision with which it turns folly into a sustained literary experience. Because the work leaves space for judgment rather than reducing its ideas to a simple lesson, different readers may find different points of emphasis within it.