The Life of Samuel Johnson,: Comprehending an Account of His Studies and Numerous Works, in Chronological Order... The Whole Exhibiting a View of Literature and Literary Men in Great-Britain for Near Half a Century, during which He Flourished. In Two Volumes.

London: by Henry Baldwin for Charles Dilly,, 1791. One of Western literature's most germinal achievements First edition of the greatest biography in the English language. It was published in a run of 1,750 copies on 16 May 1791, the 28th anniversary of Boswell's first meeting with Johnson. The immense task of compiling the thousands of notes Boswell had recorded on "the great man's talk, habits and opinions" was begun after Johnson's death in 1784. Made up of trifling incidents as well as the significant events in Johnson's life, the work sold 800 copies in the first two weeks of publication and remains a masterpiece of portraiture. "The Life of Johnson was no single book miraculously produced by an inexperienced author. It was the crowning achievement of an artist who for more than twenty-five years had been deliberately disciplining himself for such a task" (Pottle, p. xxi). "Homer is not more decidedly the first of heroic poets, Shakespeare is not more decidedly the first of dramatists, Demosthenes is not more decidedly the first of orators, than Boswell is the first of biographers" (Macaulay). This copy has all the usual cancels and, with one exception, all the misprints as called for by Pottle; here, vol. I, p. 135 is in the second, corrected state, with "give" on line ten. Pottle rightly observes that "the booksellers have given this rather uninteresting 'point' more attention than it deserves. There are probably varying states of some of the other leaves" (p. 151). As corrections were made in the press, the misprints are variant states for individual sheets, and do not indicate priority of issue for any copy. Two volumes, quarto (273 x 192 mm). Mid 20th-century speckled calf to style for Brentano's, smooth spines with two red labels, central compartments stamped with gilt urn device within decorative border, first and final compartments with gilt cross-hatch pattern, triple gilt fillets on covers enclosing wide anthemion roll, board edges and turn-ins decorated in gilt, green endpapers, edges gilt. Stipple-engraved portrait frontispiece of Johnson by James Heath after Sir Joshua Reynolds and 2 engraved plates by H. Shepherd reproducing manuscripts in facsimile. Vol. II bound without original first blank. Couple of scuffs and spots of rubbing to leather, scattered light foxing to contents; vol. I, p. 48 with neat correction to text by an early reader, pp. 131-4 soiled; vol. II with tiny faint splash mark to title page margin. A very good copy, attractively bound. Courtney 172; ESTC T64481; Grolier English 100, 54; NCBEL II, p. 1214; Pottle 79; Rothschild 463; Tinker 338.