Life of Johnson, Volume 3: 1776-1780
1781
James Boswell's monumental biography of Samuel Johnson stands as perhaps the most vivid portrait of a single human being ever committed to paper. This third volume captures Johnson's later years, from 1776 to 1780, a period shadowed by age, illness, and the loss of friends yet illuminated by some of the most sparkling conversation in English literature. Boswell accompanies Johnson on journeys, sits with him in London coffee houses, and transcribes with almost supernatural fidelity the great man's wit, his grumpiness, his profound observations on human nature, and his struggle against the melancholy that plagued him throughout life. Here is Johnson on politics, on friendship, on the approach of death - his mind still ferociously active, his tongue still lethal. What makes this biography immortal is Boswell's radical decision to let Johnson live: not as a monument but as a man, verbose, contradictory, tender, and endlessly fascinating. For anyone who wants to understand the 18th-century mind at its most brilliant, or who simply craves the company of a magnificent personality, this book remains indispensable.
