The Life of Samuel Johnson

By James Boswell,

Book cover of The Life of Samuel Johnson

Book description

In Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson, one of the towering figures of English literature is revealed with unparalleled immediacy and originality, in a biography to which we owe much of our knowledge of the man himself. Through a series of richly detailed anecdotes, Johnson emerges as a sociable figure, vigorously…

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1 author picked The Life of Samuel Johnson as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

This book is an account of the life of Samuel Johnson, author of the first dictionary in English and a man of enormous talent and learning—and also a man of devastatingly quick wit.

Perhaps his story can be recounted in terms of just a few of these vignettes and quips from the book.  

Johnson was a sophisticated denizen of his beloved London; James Boswell, a Scotsman who tells his story— obviously, himself a man of letters, was a friend, devotee, and admirer of Johnson's, whom he took several times to visit Boswell's beloved Scotland. Johnson: "The noblest prospect which a…

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