“Samuel Johnson: A Life” by David Nokes

I am a bit obsessed with Samuel Johnson at the moment and this is one of several books I have been reading and / or dipping into about this remarkable man. This is a standard popular and authoritative biography which is a pleasure to read, largely because its subject is such an engaging man to spend time with.

It is reasonable to ask why, when Johnson’s great friend James Boswell published his huge, classic and apparently pretty exhaustive biography back in 1791, there is anything much that a modern biographer can add? It is a fair question because Boswell’s book, that I am also currently working my way through, is both an extraordinarily good read and a very full account based on personal conversations as well as heaps of letters and interviews with contemporaries of the great man. I guess the answer is because Boswell was not always 100% accurate and tended to write somewhat hagiographically. There is also, of course, always more to say and endlessly different ways of appreciating Johnson’s work.

I have also been reading Peter Martin’s biography, Peter Quennell’s book on Johnson’s friends and enemies and some more scholarly material too. I have loved it all, as I have many of the essays Johnson wrote too and extracts from his dictionary. I found David Nokes's biography to be an excellent starting point.