LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON, THE

While Samuel Johnson's dictionary remains a monument of scholarship and his essays and criticism command continuing respect, we owe our knowledge of the man himself to James Boswell's biography. Through a series of detailed anecdotes, Johnson emerges as a sociable figure with a huge appetite for life, crossing swords with other great 18th-century luminaries, from Garrick and Goldsmith to Burney and Burke - even his long-suffering friend and disciple, James Boswell himself. Yet Johnson had a vulnerable, even tragic, side and anxieties and obsessions haunted his private hours.