This complete and unabridged edition is the only complete critical
edition in paperback. Samuel Johnson was a poet, essayist, dramatist,
and pioneering lexicographer, but his continuing reputation depends less
on his literary output than on the fortunate accident of finding an
ideal biographer in James Boswell. 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
conversation. 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.
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