BOSWELL, James.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

The Life of Samuel Johnson, First edition, first state, uncut in the original boards, of the most famous biography in any language. Boswell began the immense task of compiling the thousands of notes he had recorded on "the great man's talk, habits and opinions" after Johnson's death in 1784. Made up of trifling incidents as well as the significant events in Johnson's life, the work remains a masterpiece of portraiture."The Life of Johnson was no single book miraculously produced by an inexperienced author. It was the crowning achievement of an artist who for more than twenty-five years had been deliberately disciplining himself for such a task" (Pottle, p. xxi). "Homer is not more decidedly the first of heroic poets, Shakespeare is not more decidedly the first of dramatists, Demosthenes is not more decidedly the first of orators, than Boswell is the first of biographers" (Macaulay).This copy has all the usual cancels and misprints as called for by Pottle, including the misprint "gve" for "give" on page 135 of the first volume. The misprint was corrected while the sheets were still going through the press, and both states were available on publication day, 16 May 1791. Of the 1,750 copies printed, 800 were sold in the first two weeks.

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