Johnson and Boswell in Scotland by Samuel Johnson

Johnson and Boswell in Scotland by Samuel Johnson

In 1773 Samuel Johnson and James Boswell made their celebrated journey through the Highlands of Scotland and the Hebrides. This volume contains their reminiscences of the journey, presented side-by-side, page-by-page in order to compare the two versions of a single experience.

Samuel Johnson was born in 1709 above his father's bookshop in Lichfield, England. He was a sickly child, scarred by smallpox, with facial and vocal tics, likely symptoms of Tourette Syndrome. But he proved a brilliant student, attending Oxford until a lack of funds forced his departure. (Numerous honorary degrees would later justify his famous sobriquet Dr. Johnson.) At twenty-five he married Elizabeth Tetty Potter, a well-off widow twenty-one years his senior. She funded a school Johnson started, but lost much of her wealth when the school failed. Wracked by guilt, Johnson walked to London and, living virtually on the street, began writing reviews, essays and news for magazines, notably The Idler and The Rambler. In 1744, he published his masterpiece, Life Of Savage, an innovative warts-and-all biography of his friend, writer Richard Savage. Johnson would write several more lives, culminating in his acclaimed three-volume Lives of The Poets. In 1746 a group of publishers asked Johnson to compile an authoritative English dictionary. He completed the massive undertaking in 1755, and A Dictionary of the English Language would set the standard for the next 150 years. Upon his death in 1784 he was buried in Westminster Abbey. Yet his fame only rose when, in 1791, his friend James Boswell published became the most famous life of them all: Life of Samuel Johnson.

SKU	Non disponible
ISBN 13	9780300052107
ISBN 10	0300052103
Titre	Johnson and Boswell in Scotland
Auteur	Samuel Johnson
État	Non disponible
Type de reliure	Hardback
Éditeur	Yale University Press
Année de publication	1993-08-25
Nombre de pages	330
Note de couverture	La photo du livre est présentée à titre d'illustration uniquement. La reliure, la couverture ou l'édition réelle peuvent varier.
Note	Non disponible