The poet, essayist, critic, journalist and lexicographer Samuel Johnson was one of the pre-eminent figures of 18th-century English letters. Johnson was also a legendary wit and conversationalist, whose sharp-tongued pronouncements and many eccentricities are well recorded in Boswell's classic Life.
Thrown out of Oxford for a lack of funds, he rose to celebrity: author of the Dictionary, a friend to the king, companion of Reynolds, Goldsmith and Garrick.
David Nokes looks beyond Johnson's remarkable public persona and beyond the Johnson that Boswell to some extent created.
