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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... 39 when we see Boswell tampering with the life as lived in order to produce sensational material for the life as written. Johnson occasionally growled at this treatment: He sometimes could not bear being teazed with questions. I.
... lived, these episodes served the different function of drawing Johnson out. In the transition from experience to literature, they migrate from utility to ostentation. To draw Johnson out was also, one suspects, at least at times the ...
... lived with him in his younger days in the utmost intimacy and social freedom', told Boswell that Johnson 'loved to exhilarate himself with wine'.76 On his arrival in London in 1737, however, Johnson 'abstained entirely from fermented ...
... lived in great familiarity with him (though I think there was not much affection) from the year 1753 till the time Mr. Thrale and you took me up. I intend, however, to disappoint the rogues, and either make you write.
... in which she had long lived with Johnson, by which she was well acquainted with his habits, and knew how to lead him on to talk'.145 It was a task for which, given Johnson's dislike of being exhibited, it was 'often necessary.