Please Contact Us if you have any questions or to report any problems.

PITHY QUOTE FROM Johnson: Letters and Life

Open quotes
The difference between praise and flattery, is the same as between that hospitality that sets wine enough before the guest, and that which forces him to be drunk.

The Letters of Samuel Johnson & Boswell's Life of Johnson. The letters of Samuel Johnson, with Mrs. Thrale's genuine letters to him. Volume 1, Letter to Mrs. Thrale. 311. M. 24 May ’73

The Letters of Samuel Johnson & Boswell's Life of Johnson. Electronic Edition. book cover

The Letters of Samuel Johnson & Boswell's Life of Johnson. Electronic Edition.

ISBN: 978-1-57085-514-6

Language: English

MARC Records



Samuel Johnson. Oil on canvas, by Sir Joshua Reynolds, c. 1775

List of Contents

The Letters of Samuel Johnson & Boswell's Life of Johnson contains the Clarendon editions of Johnson's correspondence and of Boswell's Life of Johnson.


Johnson, Samuel. The letters of Samuel Johnson, with Mrs. Thrale's genuine letters to him. Collected and edited by R. W. Chapman. 3 vols. Oxford [Oxfordshire]: Clarendon Press; New York: Oxford University Press, 1984-.

Boswell, James. Boswell's Life of Johnson, together with Boswell's Journal of a tour of the Hebrides and Johnson's Diary of a journey into North Wales. Edited by George Birkbeck Hill, and revised by L. F. Powell. 2nd ed. Oxford: Clarendon press, 1964-1971.

  • Vol. 1. The Life (1709-1765)
  • Vol. 2. The Life (1766)
  • Vol. 3. The Life (1766-1780)
  • Vol. 4. The Life (1780-1784)
  • Vol. 5. Journal of a tour of the Hebrides and Diary of a journey into North Wales
  • Vol. 6. Index, table of anonymous persons, bibliography


Boswell's life must be the greatest biography ever written; crammed with sage advice and anecdotes both comical and touching, it is best taken unabridged.

—The Weeks


. . . It is hard to imagine any other way of examining a collected correspondence. . . . These electronic versions should be accessible to all levels of readers; they are essential for specialists.

—CHOICE