What one reviewer said about The Life of Samuel Johnson (Everyman's Library, No. 101) by James Boswell, Claude Rawson:
Surely this is "The Biography" in the same sense that to the Scholastic thinkers, Aristotle was "The Philosopher."
More to the point, it is an endlessly fascinating book, one of those rare works that can be opened at random with consistently rewarding results. Johnson, of course, is one of those rare characters who demonstrates that life is not necessarily less rich than fiction, and Boswell is an entertaining (and amusingly exasperating) chronicler. The "Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides" is also well worth reading and randomly revisiting.
However, I'm somewhat alarmed by the comments below about the accuracy of this version. I bought this because it was a decent-looking hardback version--I had actually read a library copy (some long out-of-print edition). Could some reviewer please explain the deviations? My skimming and minor re-reading hasn't revealed anything glaring yet, but it's been a while since my original reading, and I haven't sat down for a long Boswell read in a few years.
Download Life Of Johnson from Project Gutenberg
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