Books

FIRST EDITION, FIRST STATE of the most famous and most beloved biography in the English language. One of only 1750 copies of the first edition printed (both first and second states combined). "Anyone interested in biography soon becomes interested in Boswell's Life of Johnson. It stands next to other biographies as Shakespeare stands beside other playwrights: towering above them all. For more than two centuries it has been continually in print, and in that time it has won innumerable admirers. No other biography has given so much pleasure; no other biographer has created such a vivid central character. It has become a truism that, as a result of Boswell's extraordinary book, Samuel Johnson is better known to us than any other man in history" (Sisman, Boswell's Presumptuous Task, xv). First state, with "gave" on page 135 of Volume I. London: Henry Baldwin for Charles Dilly, 1791. Folio (212x266mm), modern full calf gilt in period style, raised bands, leather spine labels, gilt-ruled boards, marbled endpapers. Two volumes. Complete with engraved frontispiece portrait of Johnson by Heath after Reynolds, and two engraved plates in vol. 2. Some foxing to portrait (as usual) and offsetting to title, otherwise a fine copy with large margins and text unusually clean.

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.