Creators: From Chaucer and Durer to Picasso and Disney

“Johnson emphasizes the rarity of truly visionary artists . . . his approach is unfailingly generous. . . . Genuinely revealing.” —Publishers Weekly

From celebrated journalist and historian Paul Johnson, an enlightening look at the imagination and drive of visionaries who have changed our world.

Paul Johnson believes that creation is a mysterious business which cannot be satisfactorily analyzed. But it can be illustrated in such a way as to bring out its salient characteristics. In this companion to his New York Times bestseller, Intellectuals, he profiles outstanding and prolific creative spirits from a variety of artistic pursuits. Here are essays on such giants as Chaucer and Shakespeare, Mark Twain and T. S. Eliot, Jane Austen and George Eliot; artists such as Dürer, Turner, and the contemporary Japanese master Hokusai; architects Pugin and Viollet-le-Duc; Johann Sebastian Bach; Louis Comfort Tiffany; clothing designers Balenciaga and Dior; and masters of the 20th century, Picasso and Disney.

Kingsley Amis described Paul Johnson's Intellectuals as “a valuable and entertaining Rogues' Gallery of Adventures of the Mind.” Now the celebrated journalist and historian offers Creators, a companion volume of essays that examines a host of outstanding and prolific creative spirits. Here are Disney, Picasso, Bach, and Shakespeare; Austen, Twain, and T. S. Eliot; and Dürer, Hokusai, Pugin, and Viollet-le-Duc, among many others.

Paul Johnson believes that creation cannot be satisfactorily analyzed, but it can be illustrated to bring out its salient characteristics. That is the purpose of this instructive and witty book.

“Creators is a splendidly idiosyncratic book, brooking no compromise and bristling with opinions.” - Dominic Sandbrook, Evening Standard

“Undaunted by big subjects, undeterred by tough questions, unmuddled by vast quantities of material, unafraid of academic hostility, he can make a coherent story out of the most sprawling subject. He writes of a past which is always relevant.” - The Times (London)