Showing results for "Life of Samuel Johnson" in Biographies & Memoirs

Charming, vibrant, witty and edifying, The Life of Samuel Johnson is a work of great obsession and boundless reverence. The literary critic Samuel Johnson was 54 when he first encountered Boswell; the friendship that developed spawned one of the greatest biographies in the history of world literature. The book is full of humorous anecdote and rich characterization, and paints a vivid picture of 18th-century London, peopled by prominent personalities of the time.

This book is considered by many to be the finest literary biography ever published. Samuel Johnson was the leading literary scholar and critic of his age, helping to define the Augustan Age of English Literature. He is as celebrated for his brilliant conversation as he is for his writing.

James Boswell forever changed the genre of biography when he painstakingly transformed a scholarly profusion of detail into a perceptive, lifelike portrait of Dr. Samuel Johnson. James Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson reveals a man of outsized appetites and private vulnerabilities and is the source of much of what we know about one of the towering figures of English literature.

The son of a British army sergeant-major and Italian mother, Brian grew up in Dunston, Tyne and Wear, as it emerged from the shadow of the Second World War. Then he saw Little Richard on the BBC and it changed the course of his life. The choirboy and cub scout was going to be singer.

Boswell's biography of his friend and hero Samuel Johnson is an acknowledged classic, full of humorous anecdote and rich characterization. Johnson's complex humanity (his depression, fear of death, intellectual brilliance and rough humor) is set within a vivid picture of 18th century London peopled by personalities of the time.

Stellen Sie sich vor: Ein begeisterungsfähiger junger Mann trifft auf einen Gelehrten, den er abgöttisch bewundert. Über Jahrzehnte begleitet er ihn und hält alles, was sein Idol tut oder sagt, akribisch fest: Wen er besucht, was er isst, mit wem, was dabei geredet wird Stellen Sie sich vor, der Gelehrte sei geistreich, umfassend gebildet, aufbrausend, schlagfertig, ein höchst widersprüchlicher, freier und faszinierender Geist. Und der junge Mann sei empfindsam und nicht ohne Humor.