Books

First edition, the so-called second state with "give" reading on p. 135 in vol. I, 2 volumes, 4to, pp. xii, [16], 516; [2], 588; engraved portrait frontispiece by Heath after Joshua Reynolds, and with the Round Robin plate, and the plate showing facsimile signatures of Johnson; nice copy in contemporary full calf neatly and pleasingly rebacked sometime in the 20th century, preserving the old red and black morocco labels on spine; all the standard cancels are present, per Pottle. Regarding the "give" (versus "give") reading, Pottle notes that the "booksellers have given this rather uninteresting 'point' more attention than it deserves." Celebrated for its intimacy and vividness, Boswell's Life of Johnson "is one of the best books in the world. It is assuredly a great, very great work. Homer is not more decidedly the first of the heroic poets, Shakespeare is not more decidedly the first of the dramatists, Demosthenes is not more decidedly the first of the orators, than Boswell is the first of biographers" (Macaulay). Grolier, English 100, no. 65; Rothschild 463; Pottle 79.

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.