Samuel Johnson and his World

The figure of Dr. Johnson, which for two centuries has bulked so largely in literary history and been the cause of so much comment and quotation, has received perhaps more of our esteem than of our understanding, and has seldom been seen in the round from the viewpoints taken by the general reader. Margaret Lane, distinguished both as novelist and biographer, has here given us aspects of Johnson that, described in clear and touching words, bring to life for everyone that odd, lovable, impossible, and in his own day gigantically influential character. This book without descending into details appropriate to an exhaustive study, not only provides a full account of Johnson's main traits and actions and accomplishments, but places him in the world in which he struggled to survive and which eventually he came triumphantly to dominate. Here we sense the sights and smells of Fleet Street, the noise of the coffee houses where the great verbal battles were waged, the atmospheres pervading the luxurious mansions of the great and the intolerable squalor of the slums. Surrounding the central figure we are shown such other vivid personalities as Garrick, Burke, Reynolds, Goldsmith, Lord Chesterfield, the Thrales, and that inspired note-taker, the alternately irresistible and insufferable Boswell. Lane's account of that world includes much that has hardly been touched upon by earlier biographers. This entrancing literary sketch is illustrated by a wealth of pictures - 16 in color and over 100 monochromes - including some that have never before appeared in a biography.