Samuel Johnson: A Life - Softcover

'Nokes's terrific biography, the best of the many publications which have appeared to mark this year's tri-centenary of the Great Cham's birth.' --Kathryn Hughes, Guardian --Book of the Week

'Admirably keen on drama, colour and well-quoted dialogue, [Nokes] drops us in the thick of the action... this tale can never fail, but Nokes does it proud.' --Boyd Tonkin, Independent --Book of the Week

'Johnson was a lovable man. That is why, 300 years after his birth, we want to read about him, not just in Boswell's self-centred book, but in yet another outstanding, lifelike David Nokes biography.' --Daily Telegraph

Johnson, born weak and half-blind, shambolic and poverty-stricken, became the most admired and quoted man in the eighteenth century. Thrown out of Oxford for a lack of funds, he rose to celebrity: author of the Dictionary, a friend to the king, companion of Reynolds, Goldsmith and Garrick. David Nokes looks beyond Johnson's remarkable public persona and beyond the Johnson that Boswell to some extent created. Nokes looks at his troubled relationship with his first wife, whom he married for money but felt guilty about for the rest of his life; at his family, who haunted his dreams for years; and at his difficult, intimate relationship with Mrs Thrale. He shows a man who gave a quarter of the government pension he received to the poor, filled his home with the blind and destitute, and bequeathed his wealth to Frank Barber, an emancipated black slave brought from Jamaica. Insightful and engaging, Samuel Johnson draws an illuminating portrait of Johnson, his life and world.