BOSWELL, James.

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The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. First edition of the greatest biography in the English language. It was published in a run of 1,750 copies on 16 May 1791, the 28th anniversary of Boswell's first meeting with Johnson.The immense task of compiling the thousands of notes Boswell had recorded on "the great man's talk, habits and opinions" was begun after Johnson's death in 1784. Made up of trifling incidents as well as the significant events in Johnson's life, the work sold 800 copies in the first two weeks of publication and 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).

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