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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... Publick has confirmed, was the best encouragement for me to persevere in my purpose of producing the whole of my stores. In one respect, this Work will, in some passages, be different from the former. In my Tour, I was almost ...
... March 1752, the day on which Mrs. Johnson died. acknowl. Letter in the General Advertiser to excite the attention of the Publick to the Performance of Comus, which was next day to be acted at Drury-Lane Playhouse for the.
... publick papers, but imagine themselves writing a life, when they exhibit a chronological series of actions or preferments; and have so little regard to the manners or behaviour of their heroes, that more knowledge may be gained of a ...
... every word of his own to be made an apothegm or an oracle.'a Having said thus much by way of introduction, I commit the following pages to the candour of the Publick. Samuel Johnson was born at Lichfield, in Staffordshire, on the.
... publick stock of harmless pleasure.' In these families he passed much time in his early years. In most of them, he was in the company of ladies, particularly at Mr. Walmsley's, whose wife and sisters-in-law, of the name of Aston, and ...