Friday, October 15, 2010

Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) and James Boswell (1740-1795)

Samuel Johnson

  • works include:
    • "The Vanity of Human Wishes" (poem)
    • The Lives of the English Poets (biography)
    • essays for the journal The Rambler
    • the first modern English Dictionary (includes definitions such as "lexicographer - writer of dictionaries, a harmless drudge")
    • Rasselas (novel about Prince of Abyssinia's unsuccessful quest for happy and fufilling "choice of life")

James Boswell
  • friend and disciple of Samuel Johnson
  • wrote a genial, sympathetic biography of Johnson
  • Johnson is, according to him, a supremely witty and erudite conversationalist with a deep melancholy streak, with generosity of spirit and outbursts of irritability

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