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Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com's Best of 2001
Adam Sisman's task is almost as "presumptuous" as the one he anatomizes with such precision and grace in his text. He has attempted a biography of a biography--and not just any biography, but the most famous one in the English language. From its publication in 1791, James Boswell's The Life of Samuel Johnson has been acclaimed (and reviled) as the first truly modern biography, a book that reveals its subject with unprecedented intimacy, faults and all. The 20th-century discoveries of quantities of manuscripts, including Boswell's extremely frank journals, sparked greater interest in the man once dismissed as a mere recorder of Johnson's pithy conversation, but now shown to be an ambitious writer in his own right. More to the point for Sisman, these documents made it possible to scrutinize in detail the writing of The Life of Samuel Johnson. "Why did he want so much to write about Johnson, and why did he persist in the face of so much adversity?" asks Sisman. "How did he set about his task? Did his ideas change as his writing progressed? How did he evaluate the varied and sometimes contradictory material he gathered?" These questions are still relevant to biographers today, and Sisman addresses them with sensitivity and acuity. He begins by cogently sketching the unlikely friendship begun in 1763 between a renowned 53-year-old London man of letters and a naive 22-year-old Scotsman, then moves on to examine in depth the seven years after Johnson's death during which Boswell battled depression, bouts of heavy drinking, and venereal disease to shape masses of material into a book "that stands next to other biographies as Shakespeare stands beside other playwrights: towering above them all." The result is a thoughtful and revealing analysis of the creative process by which biography, as much as fiction, is shaped. --Wendy Smith
From Publishers Weekly
Aged 45, health waning from alcoholism, beaten to the press by rivals quick to exploit the death of literary icon Samuel Johnson in 1784, James Boswell finally began his ambitious biography two years later, in June 1786. For 21 years Boswell had been the acolyte of the creator of the great Dictionary and author of the influential Lives of the Poets. Boswell reconstructed his subject's life largely from his own proximity and other people's memories and documents. But, as Sisman points out, only the first fifth of the biography covers the 53 years of Johnson's life before master and pupil met. From that point on, the biographer is a major character in his own book. Evidently, as Sisman shows in analyzing the relationship of the two very different men, Johnson realized that he spoke for posterity each time he talked to the adoring Boswell, and that every particularity of his slovenly dress and gross behavior would be recorded. Indeed, Johnson comes alive in those and other minute details. Sisman (A.J.P. Taylor: A Life) focuses on the seven years late in Boswell's career when he finally disciplined himself to write the early masterpiece of biography. Even so, much of the credit, according to Sisman, is due not to the bibulous, prostitute-chasing Boswell, who often abandoned his tubercular, dying wife as well as his book, but to Shakespeare scholar Edmund Malone, Boswell's devoted friend. Malone kept the faltering biographer on task and despite failing eyesight painstakingly revised the ever-lengthening manuscript. When Malone was unavailable, the project languished. "I go sluggishly and comfortless about my work," Boswell confesses. "As I pass your door I cast many a longing look." While the pathos of Boswell's life lingers, Sisman's study will appeal largely to Boswell and Johnson aficionados.
See all Editorial Reviews
Adam Sisman's task is almost as "presumptuous" as the one he anatomizes with such precision and grace in his text. He has attempted a biography of a biography--and not just any biography, but the most famous one in the English language. From its publication in 1791, James Boswell's The Life of Samuel Johnson has been acclaimed (and reviled) as the first truly modern biography, a book that reveals its subject with unprecedented intimacy, faults and all. The 20th-century discoveries of quantities of manuscripts, including Boswell's extremely frank journals, sparked greater interest in the man once dismissed as a mere recorder of Johnson's pithy conversation, but now shown to be an ambitious writer in his own right. More to the point for Sisman, these documents made it possible to scrutinize in detail the writing of The Life of Samuel Johnson. "Why did he want so much to write about Johnson, and why did he persist in the face of so much adversity?" asks Sisman. "How did he set about his task? Did his ideas change as his writing progressed? How did he evaluate the varied and sometimes contradictory material he gathered?" These questions are still relevant to biographers today, and Sisman addresses them with sensitivity and acuity. He begins by cogently sketching the unlikely friendship begun in 1763 between a renowned 53-year-old London man of letters and a naive 22-year-old Scotsman, then moves on to examine in depth the seven years after Johnson's death during which Boswell battled depression, bouts of heavy drinking, and venereal disease to shape masses of material into a book "that stands next to other biographies as Shakespeare stands beside other playwrights: towering above them all." The result is a thoughtful and revealing analysis of the creative process by which biography, as much as fiction, is shaped. --Wendy Smith
From Publishers Weekly
Aged 45, health waning from alcoholism, beaten to the press by rivals quick to exploit the death of literary icon Samuel Johnson in 1784, James Boswell finally began his ambitious biography two years later, in June 1786. For 21 years Boswell had been the acolyte of the creator of the great Dictionary and author of the influential Lives of the Poets. Boswell reconstructed his subject's life largely from his own proximity and other people's memories and documents. But, as Sisman points out, only the first fifth of the biography covers the 53 years of Johnson's life before master and pupil met. From that point on, the biographer is a major character in his own book. Evidently, as Sisman shows in analyzing the relationship of the two very different men, Johnson realized that he spoke for posterity each time he talked to the adoring Boswell, and that every particularity of his slovenly dress and gross behavior would be recorded. Indeed, Johnson comes alive in those and other minute details. Sisman (A.J.P. Taylor: A Life) focuses on the seven years late in Boswell's career when he finally disciplined himself to write the early masterpiece of biography. Even so, much of the credit, according to Sisman, is due not to the bibulous, prostitute-chasing Boswell, who often abandoned his tubercular, dying wife as well as his book, but to Shakespeare scholar Edmund Malone, Boswell's devoted friend. Malone kept the faltering biographer on task and despite failing eyesight painstakingly revised the ever-lengthening manuscript. When Malone was unavailable, the project languished. "I go sluggishly and comfortless about my work," Boswell confesses. "As I pass your door I cast many a longing look." While the pathos of Boswell's life lingers, Sisman's study will appeal largely to Boswell and Johnson aficionados.
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
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