This is the first and only scholarly edition of Sir John Hawkins's
"Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.," a work that has not been widely
available in complete form for more than two hundred years.
Published in 1787, some four years before James Boswell's biography
of Johnson, Hawkins's "Life" complements, clarifies, and often
corrects numerous aspects of Boswell's "Life."
Samuel Johnson (1709-84) is the most significant English writer
of the second half of the eighteenth century; indeed, this period
is widely known as the Age of Johnson. Hawkins was Johnson's friend
and legal adviser and the chief executor of his will. He knew
Johnson longer and in many respects better than other biographers,
including Boswell, who made unacknowledged use of Hawkins's "Life"
and helped orchestrate the critical attacks that consigned the book
to obscurity.
Sir John Hawkins had special insight into Johnson's mental
states at various points in his life, his early days in London, his
association with the "Gentleman's Magazine," and his political
views and writings. Hawkins's use of historical and cultural
details, an uncommon literary device at the time, produced one of
the earliest "life and times" biographies in our language. The
Introduction by O M Brack, Jr., covers the history of the
composition, publication, and reception of the "Life" and provides
a context in which it should be read. Annotations address
historical, literary, and linguistic uncertainties, and a full
textual apparatus documents how Brack arrived at this definitive
text of Hawkins's "Life."
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