The Life of Samuel JohnsonPenguin UK, 30.10.2008 - 1312 Seiten 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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... perhaps less absolute, but it was still pronounced. In 1763 Johnson was a literary figure of substance: a poet, the author of The Rambler, The Adventurer and The Idler, a novelist, and the heroic compiler of A Dictionary of the English ...
... perhaps better, certainly for longer, than had either Richard Savage (his companion during his early days in London) or Beauclerk. But this utility did not necessarily make him Johnson's dearest friend.34 There is no mention of Boswell ...
... perhaps their Religion too, how they will be hindered from resisting illegal force, used against them, I cannot tell.'111 All the evidence, then, reveals that towards the end of his life Johnson's political sentiments were more ...
... perhaps also why he would occasionally speak affectionately about Roman Catholicism. On some subjects, freedom of inquiry entailed unwelcome psychological risks.124 The relentless disciplining of the mind to an external standard both ...
... perhaps, have accepted of less; but that Paul Whitehead had a little before got ten guineas for a poem and I would not take less than Paul Whitehead.' I may here observe, that Johnson appeared to me to undervalue Paul Whitehead upon ...