The Life of Samuel Johnson

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Considered one of the best written biographies of all-time, The Life of Samuel Johnson gives insight into the glowing mystique of the prominent English writer. By incorporating key elements from his past and personal relationships, James Boswell creates an extensive narrative of the revered figure.

Drawn from Boswell's own journals, the author recounts the life and experiences of Samuel Johnson. He uses his personal connection to investigate Johnson's origin and rise to power. His career is filtered through brief episodes highlighting obstacles and successes alongside his notable peers. It's an intimate record of the celebrated writer and fixture within literary circles.

Through his compelling writing, James Boswell successfully illustrates the character and reality of Samuel Johnson. The biography explores his strengths and weaknesses as well as his motivations and fears. Boswell's input is crucial to the story structure, delivering an informative and impactful narrative.

With an eye-catching new cover, and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of The Life of Samuel Johnson is both modern and readable. 

James Boswell (1740-1795) was a lawyer, diarist, and author born in Edinburgh. He is best known as the biographer of Samuel Johnson. Boswell is known for taking voracious notes on the grand tour of Europe that he took as a young nobleman and, subsequently, of his tour to Scotland with Johnson. He also recorded meetings and conversations with eminent individuals belonging to 'The Club', including David Garrick, Edmund Burke, Joshua Reynolds and Oliver Goldsmith.

Samuel Johnson was born in Lichfield in 1709 and was educated at Lichfield Grammar School and, for a short time, at Pembroke College, Oxford. In 1735 he married Elizabeth Jervis Porter and in 1737 moved to London. There, he became a regular contributor to the Gentleman's Magazine, but struggled to earn a living from writing. HisLondon: A Poem in Imitation of the Third Satire of Juvenalwas published anonymously in 1738 and attracted some attention. From 1750 to 1752 he issued theRambler, a periodical written almost entirely by himself, and consolidated his position as a notable moral essayist with some twenty-five essays in theAdventurer. When hisDictionary of the English Languagewas published in 1755, Johnson took on the proportions of a literary monarch in the London of his day. In need of money to visit his sick mother, he wroteRasselas(1759) reportedly in the evenings of one week, finishing a couple of days after his mother's death. In 1763 Boswell became his faithful follower and it is mainly due to him that we owe our intimate knowledge of Johnson. Johnson's last major work wasLives of the Poets. He died in December 1784.


David Womersley is the Thomas Warton Professor of English Literature at the University of Oxford. He has published widely on English literature from the Renaissance to the early nineteenth century. For Penguin he has editedGibbon's History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,Augustan Critical Writing,Burke's Philosophical Enquiry into the Sublime and Beautiful and Other Pre-Revolutionary Writings, and Samuel Johnson'sSelected Essays.