Johnson And Boswell: The Story Of Their Lives

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House of Stratus, 1 avr. 2015 - 262 pages
Hesketh Pearson’s biography is the first to combine the story of the two men whose lives were inseparable in the history of literature. The book starts with Samuel Johnson’s career up to the moment he met Boswell, then we follow James Boswell’s until he met Johnson, and took him on a journey to the Hebrides. From this point their lives mingled. Pearson has included reliable contemporary accounts of Johnson, such as Fanny Burney’s, and has skilfully made sense of Boswell’s own writings to form a clearer picture of the man of letters.
 

Table des matières

The Depression of Poverty
1
SelfEducation
7
Morbidity and Marriage
11
The Tide of Life
17
Intimacies
24
The Dictionary
30
Friends and Dependants
39
From Ireland
44
Mainly Matrimonial
114
Friendly Treatment
127
Together
135
The Rambler Rambles
148
Best and Worst
162
Tremendous Talks
172
Social Comforts
185
Various
200

The Man
51
The Meeting
62
From Scotland
68
At Large
74
In Search of a Character
84
A Biographer Abroad
91
In Search of a Cause
99
From Wales
109
Distressful Strokes
215
The Race with Death
226
The Laird and the Lord
232
The End of the Story
242
Bibliography
252
Hesketh Pearson
254
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À propos de l'auteur (2015)

Born in 1887 at Hawford, Worcesterhire, Hesketh Pearson was educated at Bedford Grammar School, then worked in a shipping Office and spent two years in America before beginning a career as an actor in 1911. Until 1931 he worked successfully in the theatre, which provided many insights for his subsequent writing career. Pearson’s early works included ‘Modern Men and Mummers’ which consisted of sketches of well-known figures in the theatre, and also short stories in ‘Iron Rations’. ‘Doctor Darwin’, a biography of Darwin which was published in 1930, was widely acclaimed and established him as one of the leading popular biographers of his day. Subsequently he concentrated on his writing full-time. However, for a period of some seven years he was in the doldrums, following an unsuccessful attempt to get the title ‘Whispering Gallery’ published. He nonetheless persisted, and subsequently had published several important biographies of major figures, such as Conan Doyle, Gilbert and Sullivan and George Bernard Shaw. His skill and expertise was widely recognised, such that for example he was able to gain the co-operation of Shaw, who both contributed and later wrote a critique of his biography, and the executors of Conan Doyle’s estate who gave Pearson unprecedented access to private papers. Pearson was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He died in 1964. His biographies have stood the test of time and are still regarded as definitive works on their subjects.

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