Status
Available
Publication
New York, Harper [1958]
Description
Hesketh Pearson's biography is the first to combine the story of the two men whose lives were inseparable in the history of literature. The book starts with Samuel Johnson's career up to the moment he met Boswell, then we follow James Boswell's until he met Johnson, and took him on a journey to the Hebrides. From this point their lives mingled. Pearson has included reliable contemporary accounts of Johnson, such as Fanny Burney's, and has skilfully made sense of Boswell's own writings to form a clearer picture of the man of letters.
User reviews
LibraryThing member DinadansFriend
Boswell's memory is a considerable part of the portrait of Samuel Johnson's public presence. Mr. Pearson realized this and does give us the pair. so far as he could recover them. It is implied, as it is as well by Frederick Pottle, another researcher, that Boswell often prodded the irritable
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Johnson into some of his major quotes. Boswell provides the researcher into social history with a relatively in-depth portrait of an eighteenth century upper middle class life. Johnson's value aside from his collection of biographies of English poets of the period, and the cleverer definitions in his dictionary, seems slight in comparison. Show Less