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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... reason that I have them no longer? Are you sick, or are you sullen?'49 To sickness and sullenness might be added calculation, and Boswell's willingness to work upon Johnson by employing what seem close to the arts of coquetry. All this was.
... reason, thin. So, in the section of the Life dealing with September 1783, when Boswell was in Scotland and consequently apart from Johnson, Boswell inserted 'a few particulars concerning him [Johnson], with which I have been favoured by ...
... reason I had to hope for the countenance of that venerable Gentleman to this Work, will appear from what he wrote to me upon a former occasion from Oxford, November 17, 1785: – 'Dear Sir, I hazard this letter, not knowing where it will ...
... reason to become cold and callous, and discontented with the world, from the neglect which he experienced of his publick and private worth, by those in whose power it was to gratify so gallant a veteran with marks of distinction. This ...
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