Audiobook · read by volunteers
Life of Samuel Johnson, Vol. I
James Boswell (1740–1795)
Read by Denny Sayers (d. 2015), Jim Mowatt, Andrew Coleman, Joshua B. Christensen, Gesine, Patti Brugman, Jason Isbell, Michael Yourshaw, Cori Samuel, Janice · 32 chapters · 14 h 00
About the book
James Boswell spent years in the company of Samuel Johnson, writing down what he saw and heard, and the result is often called the finest biography in the English language. This first volume follows Johnson from his birth in Lichfield through his youth, his early struggles in London and his work on the great Dictionary. Boswell does not polish away his subject's rough edges. We meet a brilliant, stubborn, humorous and sometimes difficult man, whose conversation delighted his friends and whose habits amused or alarmed them. The book is full of letters, anecdotes and sharp exchanges, and it paints a lively picture of eighteenth century literary society. Thirty-two parts, read by a team of volunteers, fill about fourteen hours. They invite you to sit down as if at the table of an eighteenth-century club and listen to some of the best talk ever recorded in print.
Introduction
James Boswell, born in 1740 and died in 1795, was a Scottish lawyer, diarist and writer. His Life of Samuel Johnson appeared in 1791, some years after Johnson's death in 1784. Boswell had met Johnson in 1763 and kept up the friendship for over twenty years, noting their talk and collecting documents about his life.
The book is widely considered the greatest biography in English. It was revolutionary in its effort to show Johnson as he was, with his faults as well as his genius, and in Boswell's decision to include so much of the man's own conversation. The method gave later biographers a model for how a life could be told through scenes and words rather than through praise alone. Johnson himself, the author of the Dictionary and of many essays and poems, is one of the central figures of the English eighteenth century.
This is the first volume of the work. The LibriVox recording is divided into thirty-two parts and lasts about fourteen hours, with a team of volunteers taking turns to read. The sections are generally short, which makes it easy to listen in small portions. The book remains worth hearing today for its humour, its wit and its picture of a vanished literary world. There is a particular pleasure in a biography that quotes people talking. Boswell's pages are full of sharp replies, comic misunderstandings and moments of unexpected tenderness. Even listeners who know little about the eighteenth century are quickly drawn into the company of Johnson and his friends, and into the busy streets of the London where they met.
Public domain
James Boswell died in 1795: the work is in the public domain in Switzerland, more than 70 years after the author’s death.
The LibriVox volunteers dedicated this recording to the public domain.
Sources : LibriVox page · Files at the Internet Archive · Original text