Boswell’s Life of Johnson: Including Their Tour to The Hebrides.

CROKER, John Wilson [James Boswell].

$1,500.00

Item Number: 138277

London: John Murray, 1860.

Finely bound example of the most celebrated biography in the English language, decorated with a concealed split fore-edge painting. Octavo, bound in full period morocco with gilt titles and tooling to the spine in six compartments within raised gilt bands, elaborate gilt ruling and fleuron cornerpieces to the front and rear panels, gilt turn-ins and inner dentelles, all edges gilt, decorated with a concealed split fore-edge painting revealing two maritime landscapes, illustrated, ribbon bound in. In very good condition. Bookplate. A unique example.

“Boswell excelled in insight into human nature and in ability to dramatize a situation… It was a crucial part of Boswell’s magic to give significance and vitality to the apparently trivial; it is this trait, together with his notable accuracy and unparalleled completeness of portraiture, that made him… ‘the Shakespeare of biographers” (Baugh et al., 1065-66). "One of Western literature's most germinal achievements: unprecedented in its time in its depth of research and its extensive use of private correspondence and recorded conversation..." (Gordon Turnbull, Oxford DNB).