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First edition of the greatest biography in the English language, "one of Western literature's most germinal achievements" (ODNB). Contemporary copies of Boswell's Life of Johnson bound in one are unusual, but the book is perfectly manageable - indeed rather handsome - as a single volume. The copy includes the additions and corrections to the work, issued separately and not often found. The immense task of compiling the thousands of notes Boswell had recorded on "the great man's talk, habits and opinions" was begun after Johnson's death in 1784. Made up of trifling incidents as well as the significant events in Johnson's life, the work sold 800 copies in the first two weeks of publication and remains a masterpiece of portraiture. "The Life of Johnson was no single book miraculously produced by an inexperienced author. It was the crowning achievement of an artist who for more than twenty-five years had been deliberately disciplining himself for such a task" (Pottle, p. xxi). "Homer is not more decidedly the first of heroic poets, Shakespeare is not more decidedly the first of dramatists, Demosthenes is not more decidedly the first of orators, than Boswell is the first of biographers" (Macaulay). This copy has all the usual cancels and misprints as called for by Pottle, including vol. I, p. 135 with the uncorrected state "give" on line ten. As corrections were made in the press, the misprints are variant states for individual sheets, and do not indicate priority of issue for any copy. "The Principal Corrections and Additions to the first edition of Mr. Boswell's Life of Dr. Johnson" were published in 1793. It is here divided in two parts and bound at the end of each respective volumes. The corrections were Boswell's last publication and were issued simultaneously with the second edition of the Life, to allow owners of the first edition to have the additions without needing to purchase the subsequent edition. READ MORE Two volumes bound in one, quarto (280 x 215 mm). Contemporary russia, sympathetically rebacked, spine lettered and decorated in gilt with place and date at foot, covers with wide gilt border, inner turn-ins attractively gilt with roundels, marbled endpapers and edges. Stipple-engraved portrait frontispiece of Johnson by James Heath after Sir Joshua Reynolds, 2 engraved plates by H. Shepherd reproducing manuscripts in facsimile. Later collector's label to front free endpaper verso (Lewis Raddon). Corners skilfully restored, a little mostly marginal foxing, neat repair to short closed tear at fore edge of second title page: an excellent copy. Courtney 172; ESTC T64481; Grolier English 100, 54; NCBEL II, p. 1214; Pottle, Literary Career of James Boswell 79; Rothschild 463; Tinker 338.

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.