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
Results 1-5 of 79
... London during the previous winter, and in his journal he recorded his sentiments when the capital was laid out before his eyes: When we came upon Highgate hill and had a view of London, I was all life and joy. I repeated Cato's ...
... London journal oscillate between moments of pious, hopeful sobriety – I went to Mayfair Chapel and heard prayers and an excellent sermon from the Book of Job on the comforts of piety. I was in a fine frame. And I thought that GOD really ...
... London Chronicle. acknowl. Review of Goldsmith's Traveller, a Poem, in the Critical Review. 1765. The Plays of William Shakspeare, in eight volumes, 8vo. with Notes. acknowl. 1766. The Fountains, a Fairy Tale, in Mrs. Williams's ...
... London together. Davy Garrick is to be with you early the next week, and Mr. Johnson to try his fate with a tragedy, and to see to get himself employed in some translation, either from the Latin or the French. Johnson is a very good ...
... London, I have heard him relate, was an Irish painter,50 whom he knew at Birmingham, and who had practised his own precepts of œconomy for several years in the British capital. He assured Johnson, who, I suppose, was then meditating to ...