Books

Three octavo volumes extended to seven (8 7/8 x 6 inches; 222 x 152 mm.). Extra-illustrated by the insertion of over six hundred plates including many portraits and scenes by various artists, at least one original letter (complete with envelope), pages from books and periodicals contemporary to the events being related by Boswell (including The Gentleman's Magazine), notices of marriages and deaths, bookseller catalogues, auction catalogues, etc., some items with hand-written captions, many mounted onto stiff paper with decorative borders. Bound by Pfister of New York ca. 1901, in full red morocco, covers elaborately stamped in gilt, spines with five raised bands, decorative gilt inside borders, mottled pink endleaves. With the bookplate of Robert Freeman Pick. "Boswell is the first of biographers. He has no second. He has distanced all his competitors so decidedly that it is not worth while to place them" (Macaulay). Indeed, drawing on his close and longstanding collaboration with Johnson as well as Johnson's own diary, James Boswell released a book that was a popular success and helped to establish the modern genre of biography. Still considered an important resource on the life and times of the famed memoirist and dictionary compiler, Boswell's Life of Johnson breathes vivid life into one of the most important British figures of the century. "We know of him not as he was known to men of his generation, but as he was known to men whose fathers he might have been and long after his works may be forgotten, he will be remembered through Boswell's Life" (Macaulay). F. J. Pfister was a New York-based bookbinder active during the 1890s and 1900s. A lecture in 1900 he "delivered an interesting address on the art of decorating the covers of books by means of pyrography, or of "burning in" with a heated tool the design with which the cover of a book is to be decorated, instead of impressing it, either blind or gilded, with dies or the ordinary binders' tools. Mr. Pfister pointed out that pyrography is not a recent art, but an ancient process revived" (The Booksellers' League). With the Ex-Libris in each volume of one "R.F. Pick", his name across an open book laying on two laurel branches and with a small beetle busily eating his way through the pages. Based on the name, the New York bindery, and the design of the Ex-Libris it seems highly likely that our Mr. Pick was the bookseller of that name who had an establishment at 136 E. 34th Street, New York City, and advertised his firm as "Bookseller and Importer" of "Rare and Choice Books". Interestingly, on the same page of the Literary Collector (dated October 1901 to March 1902) on which we find Mr. Pick's advertisement is one for the bindery, F.J. Pfister, directly beneath.

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.