Books

THE LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON. Boswell, James Published by George Bayntun, Bath, 1925 2 Vols Cosway Style Bindings by Bayntun Riviere, Bath, England. Beautiful, first edition, illustrated two-volume edition of the most celebrated biography in the English language. Quarto, Published by George Bayntun. bound in full Brown morocco, spines slightly sunned, Cosway Style binding extra gilt, with gilt titles and gold and blind tooling to the spine in six compartments within raised gilt bands, Silk deblures, all edges gilt. Housed in 2 separate cloth slipcases. Complete with 576 illustrations, facsimiles and maps including 13 plates in photogravure. Newly edited with notes by Roger Ingpen. Boswell excelled in insight into human nature and in ability to dramatize a situation. It was a crucial part of Boswell's magic to give significance and vitality to the apparently trivial; it is this trait, together with his notable accuracy and unparalleled completeness of portraiture, that made him the Shakespeare of biographers. (Baugh et al., 1065-66). "One of Western literature's most germinal achievements: unprecedented in its time in its depth of research and its extensive use of private correspondence and recorded conversation." (Gordon Turnbull, Oxford DNB).

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.