Robert Massie Freeman

If you started reading this book without knowing anything about it, you would think you were reading Boswell's Life of Johnson. In a sense you would be. A much better title for this book would be Boswell's Afterlife of Johnson. That is what this book is about: Boswell's account of Samuel Johnson's meetings with Napoleon, Socrates, Shakespeare, Lord Macauley, Tettie, Mrs. Thrale, and others. Boswell communicates these meetings via an earthly medium, R.M. Freeman. Boswell records Johnson's observations on a variety of subjects from the Irish Nation to the Labour Party, and provides heavenly reports of Johnson playing auction bridge and trying his hand at golf.

Johnson's meeting with Napoleon was printed in a contemporary periodical. Reading it will give you an idea of how close Freeman comes to sounding like "Boswell on Johnson."

Copies are inexpensive on abebooks.… (more)