James Boswell. The Life of
Samuel Johnson.
Boswell
wrote one of the most famous and popular biographies in the English
language. Because he was much younger than Johnson (He did not
meet until he was 23 and Johnson was 54.), he did not have first-hand
knowledge of Johnson's early life, and he only spent a limited amount
of time with Johnson after they did meet. Also, there is only a
limited amount of material available for Johnson's early life. On
the other hand, there was a vast amount of material available for
Johnson's later life. There was material from Boswell's personal
dealings with Johnson, and material available from other sources.
Boswell has come under
criticism for idealizing Johnson--he cleaned up some of the material he
put into the biography. Also, the biography tends to deal with
lively descriptions of individual scenes from Johnson's life and
be skimpy on the periods in between those scenes.
Nevertheless, Boswell's biography is a landmark in the developing art
of writing biographies and has influenced the discipline of biography
writing as well as those who simply want to know more about Samuel
Johnson.