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. |
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... contradiction ('No, Sir ...'), and draws other fine distinctions in its wake, for when Boswell introduces the subject of 'riches' to the conversation, Johnson's imagination moves from politics to money and his language is suddenly.
James Boswell David Womersley. moves from politics to money and his language is suddenly impregnated with fiscal figures ('gain', 'procure') – figures which, in their own suggested gradations of worth, capture and express something of ...
... language. He told him, that he had early laid it down as a fixed rule to do his best on every occasion, and in every company; to impart whatever he knew in the most forcible language he could put it in; and that by constant practice ...
... 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,
... language in which he has embalmed so many eminent persons, the world would probably have had the most perfect example of biography that was ever exhibited. But although he at different times, in a desultory manner, committed to writing ...