Books

London: printed by Henry Baldwin, for Charles Dilly, in the Poultry, 1793. First London octavo, third edition overall following the first of 1791 and the Dublin octavo of 1792; 3 volumes, pp. [2], xviii, [xvii]-xxxix, [1], [*i]-*xxxvi, [2], 603, [1]; [2], 634; [2], 711, [1]; frontispiece portrait, folding "Round Robin" plate, folding facsimile of Johnson's handwriting; original blue paper-covered boards, roan shelfbacks, titles printed in black on spines (mostly rubbed away on volumes I and II); spines rubbed and worn with chips out at the tops and bottoms, joints cracked; good copy, at best, but uncommon in original boards, uncut. This copy has the extra leaf *c3 in volume one with "additional corrections" and all the misprints identified by Rothschild, with the exception that page 408 of volume three is printed incorrectly. "The text of the second edition ... deserves a close study. Although we believe that the third represents the form in which Boswell would ultimately have…

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.