Without Boswell Johnson would have been a footnote to the history of English literature of no interest to English lit. undergrads, despite having compiled the f

Without Boswell Johnson would have been a footnote to the history of English literature of no interest to English lit. undergrads, despite having compiled the first useful dictionary of the English language. > Why would most normal people be interested in a biography of an 18th century literary figure? Because, as other have noted, it opens the door on London's public house intellectual scene in the mid-18th century. And the character Johnson ends up being a fascinating raconteur, even if his literary works have not withstood the test of time. And it's not really that much of a biography, as we would think of a biography today. There's very little on Johnson's literary work which had propelled him to fame in his lifetime. A royal pension (happily for him) relieved Johnsonof having to produce any more works, I think sometime around the time Boswell met him. Johnson spent the last decades of his life as a popular man about town, with the sycophantic Boswell recording his conversations verbatim, which Johnson and others frequently teased Boswell about.