The Life of Samuel Johnson

Boswell begins with an introduction that seeks to justify the nature and aims of The Life of Johnson. He says that it would have been ideal for Johnson himself to have written his own autobiography, especially given his fine efforts in writing the biographies of others. In fact, Johnson did write down sporadic and fragmentary narratives of his life, but he never formed these fragments into a “regular composition,” and destroyed them before his death. The task of recounting Johnson’s life to the world has fallen to Boswell.

A good part of the introduction finds Boswell boosting himself and his efforts and credibility as a biographer. For instance, he deprecates other contemporaneous efforts to write biographies of Johnson, including one “ponderous” book by Sir John Hawkins that misunderstands Johnson’s character and actions.

Because he enjoyed a close friendship with Johnson for “upwards of twenty years” (19) and consistently planned the biography during that time, Boswell insists that he is the best person to write the story of Johnson’s life. His method in the book will be to present his subject “as he really was” (22) by including a good portion of Johnson’s own writing and statements and by presenting both his virtues and flaws.