Description
This biography of English writer and literary critic Samuel Johnson was an instant success, and represents a landmark in the development of the modern genre of biography. It has been called the greatest biography written in English, one of the greatest biographies ever written, and among the greatest nonfiction books of all time, being valued as both an important source of information on Johnson and his times, as well as an important and enduring work of literature. After Johnson’s death in 1784, Boswell published his “Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides”, based on a diary Boswell had kept during their 1773 tour and including detailed descriptions of where he and Johnson had gone and what Johnson had said. This Journal served as a teaser for the longer biography of Johnson that Boswell was preparing for publication, which would exhibit the same qualities. James Boswell, 9th Laird of Auchinleck (1740-1795), was a Scottish biographer, diarist, and lawyer, born in Edinburgh, and is best known for his biography of the English writer Samuel Johnson, “Life of Samuel Johnson”. A great mass of Boswell’s diaries, letters, and private papers were recovered between the 1920s and 1950s, and their publication by Yale University has transformed his reputation. Samuel Johnson (1709-1784), often called Dr Johnson, was an English writer who made lasting contributions as a poet, playwright, essayist, moralist, literary critic, sermonist, biographer, editor, and lexicographer. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography calls him “arguably the most distinguished man of letters in English history”. Our set of 5 volumes (edited by Croker) do not impress when viewed from the outside, the half-leather bindings and marbled covers having suffered considerable damage to the spines, which are either partially missing, partly-detached, or badly discoloured. The covers, however, are all clean and undamaged; textblock edges all marbled to match the covers; bindings firm with no loose pages, and pages generally clean and bright. The folding map in Vol. 2 is badly browned, but this does not affect the adjacent pages. Marbled endpapers match the covers and textblock edges. Only 4 of the volumes have portrait frontispieces, oddly, and these are also badly browned, as are the title pages. Previous owner’s name (dated 1837) in neat spidery ink in each volume. Rebinding of the spines would result in a very handsome set.