The Life of Samuel Johnson: Introduction by Claude Rawson

One of the greatest and most compelling of all biographies in literature had its beginnings on a fateful day in London in 1763, when young James Boswell determinedly attached himself to the dominant literary figure of his age—the splendidly humane, devastatingly witty, often troubled Dr. Samuel Johnson. What followed was one of the most famous of literary friendships, one that Boswell carefully documented over the years and eventually made the basis of an extraordinarily vivid group portrai...