Life of Johnson

James Boswell

Edited by R. W. Chapman

(The World’s Classics)

Oxford University Press, 1980, [unabridged], ISBN 0192815377, paperback

Very Good Condition, minor edge and shelf wear, a little rubbing and bumping to edges and corners, minor creasing and marking to covers, uncreased spine (see photographs)

“Samuel Johnson was a poet, essayist, dramatist, and pioneering lexicographer, but his continuing reputation depends less on his modest literary output than on the fortunate accident of finding an ideal biographer in James Boswell.  Surely no other biographer can have had more devotion to his subject, more opportunity to study him, or more talent in bringing him vividly to life than Boswell in his Life of Johnson.  As Johnson’s constant and admiring companion, Boswell was able to record not only the outward events of his life, but also the humour, wit, and sturdy common sense of his conservation.  His brilliant portrait of a major literary figure of the eighteenth century, enriched by historical and social detail, remains a monument to the art of biography.”