Boswell's Presumptuous Task: The Making of the Life of Dr. Johnson
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.45 (790 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 0374115613 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 400 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2013-02-15 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
Adam Sisman traces the friendship between Boswell and his great mentor, one of the most unlikely pairings in literature, and provides a fascinating and original account of Boswell's seven-year struggle to write the Life following Johnson's death in 1784. How could such a fool have written such a book?Boswell's "presumptuous task" was his biography of Johnson. At the time, Boswell was trying -- and failing -- to make his mark in the world: desperate for money; debilitated by drink; torn between his duties at home and the lure of London; tormented by rival biographers; often embarrassed, humiliated and depressed. Yet Boswell himself was regarded by his contemporaries as a man of no judgment and condemned by posterity as a lecher and a drunk. Boswell's Presumptuous Task shows movingly how a man who failed in almost everything else produced a masterpiece.. A heroic, brilliantly detailed portrait of the biograp
From its publication in 1791, James Boswell's The Life of Samuel Johnson has been acclaimed (and reviled) as the first truly modern biography, a book that reveals its subject with unprecedented intimacy, faults and all. "How did he set about his task? Did his ideas change as his writing progressed? How did he evaluate the varied and sometimes contradictory material he gathered?" These questions are still relevant to biographers today, and Sisman addresses them with sensitivity and acuity. "Why did he want so much to write about Johnson, and why did he persist in the face of so much adversity?" asks Sisman. Adam Sisman's task is almost as "presumptuous" as the one he anatomizes with such precision and grace in his text.
"Bozzy and the Great Cham" according to bibliomane01. In this magnificent work Mr Sisman describes the making of that greatest of all biographies, Boswell's Life of Dr Johnson. To his contemporaries the task that Boswell had taken on was presumptuous indeed - to record the life of the greatest literary man of his age, while being dismissed himself as a frivolous and reprobate dilettante incapable of any serious activity. Well, the world knows that Bozzy succeeded in confounding his critics, but the tragic irony of his predicament was that he succeeded too well. While hailing the book as a masterpiece, the current and future literary es. One of the best non-fiction books of this or any other year! BEN RILEY This book should be a must-read for anyone interested in history, biography, politics, or literary endeavors. The writing is smooth as silk, free from academic obfuscation, reading more like a novel than an in-depth analysis of one of the most important events in literary history. To be sure though, the work is not without its blemishes. As a previous reviewer noted, a familiarity with Boswell's biography of Johnson would certainly enhance a reader's enjoyment and understanding, as would a basic grounding in 18th Century British history. Sisman does not interrupt the flow of his nar. Fascinating Robert Collins I knew little of Dr. Johnson, and virtually nothing of Boswell, before this book, which is largely a dual biography of the two. Though I found the writing style is a bit ponderous, I stuck with it and feel the time invested in reading this well worth it.