The Life of Samuel JohnsonPenguin UK, 2008 M10 30 - 1312 pages In Boswell’s Life of Samuel Johnson, one of the towering figures of English literature is revealed with unparalleled immediacy and originality. While Johnson’s Dictionary remains a monument of scholarship, and his essays and criticism command continuing respect, we owe our knowledge of the man himself to this biography. Through a series of wonderfully detailed anecdotes, Johnson emerges as a sociable figure with a huge appetite for life, crossing swords with other great eighteenth-century luminaries, from Garrick and Goldsmith to Burney and Burke – even his long-suffering friend and disciple James Boswell. Yet Johnson had a vulnerable, even tragic, side and anxieties and obsessions haunted his private hours. Boswell’s sensitivity and insight into every facet of his subject’s character ultimately make this biography as moving as it is entertaining. |
From inside the book
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... English Literature at the University of Oxford, and a professorial fellow of St Catherine's College. He has published widely on English literature from the Renaissance to the early nineteenth century, his most recent book being Gibbon ...
... English. As Boswell himself put it in a letter of 21 April 1786 to Hugh Blair, 'I will venture to promise that my Life of my revered Friend will be the richest piece of Biography that has ever appeared. The Bullion will be immense ...
... David Womersley. correctness and elegance to do justice to one of the most instructive and entertaining works in the English language. – April 8, 1799 EDMOND MALONE. A CHRONOLOGICAL CATALOGUE OF THE PROSE WORKSa OF SAMUEL JOHNSON,
... English Version of Brumoy, – 'A Dissertation on the Greek Comedy,' and the General Conclusion of the Book. intern. evid. Introduction to the World Displayed, a Collection of Voyages and Travels. acknowl. Three Letters in the Gazetteer ...
... English. intern. evid. Taxation no Tyranny; an Answer to the Resolutions and Address of the American Congress.15 ... English Poets; afterwards published with the Title of Lives of the English Poets. acknowl. Argument on the Importance of ...