Dr. Johnson & Mr. Savage (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780679757702)

In this outstanding, eminently readable work of literary scholarship, Holmes explores the enigmatic friendship between Samuel Johnson and the poet Richard Savage, whom Johnson memorialized in Lives of the Poets. Synthesizing a wide array of contradictory historical sources, from Johnson's Life of Savage to Boswell's Life of Johnson, the correspondence of Johnson's contemporaries and modern scholarship, Holmes shows that Savage was a notorious and alluring figure when Johnson first arrived in London in 1737. . . .

"Holmes enlivens his study with keen insights into the art of biography and evocative glimpses into the professional literary industry of 18th-century London: its oppositional politics, literary journals and Grub Street coffee houses bustling with impoverished writers."--Publishers Weekly

"In the course of explaining how and why Johnson told his story as he did, Holmes provides a fairly full biography of Savage, the first book-length study since Clarence Tracy's The Artificial Bastard (1953). Holmes' book . . . is at once learned and a pleasure to read."--Library Journal

Author: Richard Holmes
ISBN-10: 0679757708
ISBN-13: 9780679757702
Publisher: Vintage
Language: English
Published: 04/30/1996
Pages: 272
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.75lbs
Size: 5.40h x 8.40w x 0.70d

Review Citation(s):
New York Times 05/26/1996 pg. 20