Samuel Johnson: A Biography

Samuel Johnson was a pessimist with an enormous zest for living. It has been said that no one was ever more typically English and it has also been said that he is one of the world’s greatest eccentrics. But no other single trait of his character is quite so striking as the strange combination of deeply pessimistic convictions with an enormous – almost Gargantuan – appetite for learning, for literature, for good company, and for food. The literature surrounding Samuel Johnson is enormous and there is probably no other English man of letters except Shakespeare whom so many people acknowledge as the chief interest in their lives. They not only write books and read papers, they also form clubs, give dinners, stage celebrations, and collect curios.