Folio Archives 482: The Life of Samuel Johnson by James Boswell – LIMITED EDITION 1968
Talk Folio Society Devotees
Join LibraryThing to post.
1wcarter
The Life of Samuel Johnson, Exhibiting a View of Literature and Literary Men in Great Britain for Nearly Half a Century During which he Flourished by James Boswell – LIMITED EDITION 1968
James Boswell, 9th Laird of Auchinleck (1740-1795) was a Scottish biographer, diarist, and lawyer, who was born in Edinburgh. He is best known for this biography, but he was also a key figure in the Scottish Enlightenment who wrote candid journals about his travels and other 18th. century elites. Meeting Johnson in London in 1763, Boswell began a lifelong friendship, meticulously recording his conversations. Together they travelled to the Hebrides in 1773, and his record of this journey was published by The Folio Society as Journals of the Western Isles (see pictures HERE) in 1990.
In 1985 The Folio Society also published Boswell's perceptive and uninhibited London Journal, 1762-63 (see pictures HERE).
Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) was an English writer who made lasting contributions as a poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic, moralist, biographer, editor, and probably most importantly, as a lexicographer. He is arguably the most distinguished man of letters in English history. His “magnum opus” was the Dictionary of the English Language that took him and a team of scholars eight years to complete in 1755. It was the first comprehensive dictionary of the language. Johnson also wrote numerous essays, sermons, and poems. A huge two volume facsimile of the first edition of this dictionary was published by The Folio Society in 2006 (reviewed HERE.).
The Folio Society has published two other works by Samuel Johnson, Lives of the English Poets in 1965 and Rasselas in 1975.
This biography, first published in 1791, is the culmination of thirty years work, during which time Boswell collected and collated hundreds of letters to and from Johnson, as well as details of conversations, meeting and activities. Johnson was in contact with an extraordinarily wide range of notable and exceptional people including Cpt. James Cook, Alexander Pope, Oliver Goldsmith and William Hogarth. Almost every page of the book has footnotes, sometimes such extensive ones that the footnote extends over several pages.
Boswell himself wrote that his biography of Johnson was “the most perfect that can be conceived, and will be more of a LIFE than any work that has ever yet appeared”. His self-congratulatory optimism was entirely justified as this is one of the finest works of biography in the English language.
The Folio Society edition of The Life of Samuel Johnson was published as two volumes in 1968 as both a standard edition and a leather-bound limited edition of 200 copies. It is the latter edition that is reviewed here. The contents of both is identical.
The two volumes were edited by Rodney Shewan and contain sixteen leaves of gravure plates per volume. The limited edition volumes are bound in red morocco leather with ribbed spines and gilt spine titling. The page tops are gilt and they are housed in a red buckram-covered slipcase (26.5x16.9x8.7cm). The endleaves are printed with a black and white marbled pattern. Volume one has 568 pages and volume two 684 pages.
The standard edition is quarter bound in dark green leather and green cloth boards with an oval brown paper cover-label. It has brown endleaves and a pale brown two-volume slipcase.
STANDARD EDITION
LIMITED EDITION
An index of the other illustrated reviews in the "Folio Archives" series can be viewed here.
James Boswell, 9th Laird of Auchinleck (1740-1795) was a Scottish biographer, diarist, and lawyer, who was born in Edinburgh. He is best known for this biography, but he was also a key figure in the Scottish Enlightenment who wrote candid journals about his travels and other 18th. century elites. Meeting Johnson in London in 1763, Boswell began a lifelong friendship, meticulously recording his conversations. Together they travelled to the Hebrides in 1773, and his record of this journey was published by The Folio Society as Journals of the Western Isles (see pictures HERE) in 1990.
In 1985 The Folio Society also published Boswell's perceptive and uninhibited London Journal, 1762-63 (see pictures HERE).
Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) was an English writer who made lasting contributions as a poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic, moralist, biographer, editor, and probably most importantly, as a lexicographer. He is arguably the most distinguished man of letters in English history. His “magnum opus” was the Dictionary of the English Language that took him and a team of scholars eight years to complete in 1755. It was the first comprehensive dictionary of the language. Johnson also wrote numerous essays, sermons, and poems. A huge two volume facsimile of the first edition of this dictionary was published by The Folio Society in 2006 (reviewed HERE.).
The Folio Society has published two other works by Samuel Johnson, Lives of the English Poets in 1965 and Rasselas in 1975.
This biography, first published in 1791, is the culmination of thirty years work, during which time Boswell collected and collated hundreds of letters to and from Johnson, as well as details of conversations, meeting and activities. Johnson was in contact with an extraordinarily wide range of notable and exceptional people including Cpt. James Cook, Alexander Pope, Oliver Goldsmith and William Hogarth. Almost every page of the book has footnotes, sometimes such extensive ones that the footnote extends over several pages.
Boswell himself wrote that his biography of Johnson was “the most perfect that can be conceived, and will be more of a LIFE than any work that has ever yet appeared”. His self-congratulatory optimism was entirely justified as this is one of the finest works of biography in the English language.
The Folio Society edition of The Life of Samuel Johnson was published as two volumes in 1968 as both a standard edition and a leather-bound limited edition of 200 copies. It is the latter edition that is reviewed here. The contents of both is identical.
The two volumes were edited by Rodney Shewan and contain sixteen leaves of gravure plates per volume. The limited edition volumes are bound in red morocco leather with ribbed spines and gilt spine titling. The page tops are gilt and they are housed in a red buckram-covered slipcase (26.5x16.9x8.7cm). The endleaves are printed with a black and white marbled pattern. Volume one has 568 pages and volume two 684 pages.
The standard edition is quarter bound in dark green leather and green cloth boards with an oval brown paper cover-label. It has brown endleaves and a pale brown two-volume slipcase.
STANDARD EDITION
LIMITED EDITION
An index of the other illustrated reviews in the "Folio Archives" series can be viewed here.
