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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... wrote to Boswell (who acknowledges that he had been 'with much regret long silent') and commented on the absence of the letters which had provided comfort in the midst of his ailments: 'In this uncomfortable state your letters used to ...
... wrote and gave to his much loved friend Dr. Bathurst the Papers in the Adventurer, signed T. acknowl. 1754. Life of Edw. Cave in the Gentleman's Magazine. acknowl. 1755. A DICTIONARY, with a Grammar and History, of the ENGLISH LANGUAGE ...
... wrote, of which a considerable part are yet unpublished. It is hoped that those persons in whose possession they are, will favour the world with them. JAMES BOSWELL. 'No other speaker of my living actions, 'To keep mine. 'After my death ...
... wrote Geila for Dancala, which cost two of our fathers their lives.' Every one acquainted with Johnson's manner will be sensible that there is nothing of it here; but that this sentence might have been composed by any other man. But, in ...
... wrote a copy of verses, which I have not been able to recover; but with what facility and elegance he could warble the amorous lay, will appear from the following lines which he wrote for his friend Mr. Edmund Hector. VERSES to a LADY ...