Books

6 Volumes. 8vo. with half-titles. 6 portraits (incl. 4 frontis.), fold-out frontis. chart, 6 folding facsimile letters (some double-page), & folding coloured map. original quarter morocco, t.e.g. (spines sunned with some wear to extremities). First Edition Edited by George Birkbeck Hill of the most famous biography in the English language. "The definitive edition with copious annotations and a model index." (Encyc. Brit., 11th Edn.) "This has so long held the field as the one edition for scholarly use that it is most unlikely it will every be superseded� Hill s] purpose was�to surround Boswell s book with as rich a mass of illustrative comment concerning the literature and literary men in Great Britain during the latter half of the eighteenth century as he could find reasonable connexion for in the allusions of the text�[His] references to parallel passages in Johnson s own works constitute one of the most valuable features of the edition, as the index to the Life serves in some measure as a concordance to the Works. The mass of pertinent illustrative material from other books shows Hill to have been easily the best-read of all the editors after Malone�The great mass of pertinent matter from other books, the fullness and convenience of the index, and the uniform accuracy of the references, make the edition one of the few indispensable tools for all workers in the eighteenth century." (Pottle) NCBEL II 1214. Pottle 98. cfGrolier, One Hundred Books Famous In English Literature, 65.

Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. is a biography of Dr. Samuel Johnson written by James Boswell. It is regarded as an important stage in the development of the modern genre of biography and has been described as the greatest biography written in English.