Samuel Johnson

A Biography

Peter Martin

  • Kansas City Star Top 10 Notable Book of 2008
  • Contents
  • List of Illustrations
  • Preface

    Part One, Staffordshire Youth

  1. Anecdotes of Beggary
  2. Stepping on the Duckling
  3. Leaping over the Rail
  4. Two Benefactors

    5. Part Two, Despondency and Hope

  5. Oxford: Wielding a Scholar’s Weapon
  6. Horrible Imaginings
  7. Stirrings in Birmingham
  8. Taking a Wife

    9. Part Three, Slow Rises Worth

  9. Stranger in London
  10. Sons of Misery: Finding Richard Savage
  11. ‘Slow Rises Worth by Poverty Depress’d’
  12. Wandering in the Midlands

    13. Part Four, Triumph: The Dictionary Years

  13. London Revived: A Lion in Harness
  14. A Lifeline: The Dictionary
  15. Poetic Interludes
  16. Tetty and ‘Amorous Propensities’
  17. The Triumph of the Moralist
  18. Darkness Falls
  19. Once More unto the Breach: Back to the Dictionary

    20. Part Five, Depression, Shakespeare, Travel and Anger

  20. Stalled
  21. ‘Suffering Chimeras’
  22. ‘Vain and Corrupt Imaginations’
  23. Boswell and Mrs Thrale
  24. Shakespeare and the Living World
  25. Coliseum of Beasts
  26. Back to Shakespeare and the Dictionary
  27. The Road to the Hebrides
  28. Politics and Travel

    29. Part Six, Biography and ‘The Race with Death’

  29. ‘A Very Poor Creeper upon the Earth’
  30. Biographical Straitjacket
  31. Losing Ground
  32. The Last Days
  • Notes
  • Bibliography
  • Acknowledgements
  • Index
  • Cover: Samuel Johnson

Peter Martin has taught English literature on both sides of the Atlantic and is the author of A Life of James Boswell.