Books

Printed for T. Cadell and W. Davies, in the Strand,, 1807. 4 vols., roy. 8vo., Fifth Edition, with engraved portrait frontispiece, and 2 large folding facsimiles, free endpapers mildly browned, some light age-staining to text; strongly bound IN ORIGINAL DOVE-GREY BOARDS, expertly rebacked in ivory faux-vellum to style, backstrips with printed paper labels, uncut, boards lightly age-soiled, a remarkably bright, clean, crisp copy. Complete with half-titles, and the errata slip to all four volumes in first volume. With 16pp publisher's catalogue (dated 1 December 1808) bound in at end of first volume. The facsimiles are the 'Round Robin' and the sample of Johnson's hand. In addition to the dedication to Reynolds, this edition retains Bowell's advertisements to the first and second editions, Malone's similar to the fourth and fifth editions, and the chronological list of Johnson's prose works. 'In this fifth edition some errors have been corrected. Two…

James Boswell's 'The Life of Samuel Johnson' is regarded as one of the greatest biographies written in the English language. It provides an in-depth and vivid recounting of the life of Samuel Johnson, a writer and critic who was a towering figure in 18th-century British literature.