Walter Jackson Bate

A biographical study of the eighteenth-century lexicographer and critic combines narrative with psychological insights

Samuel Johnson

W. Jackson Bate

A biographical study of the eighteenth-century lexicographer and critic combines narrative with psychological insights.

A Biography

Jeremy Anderberg

"Samuel Johnson has fascinated more people than any other writer except Shakespeare."

So begins Bate's memorable, surely unmatched biography of one of history's most interesting (and modernity's most overlooked) writers and humans.

So also begins my surely ongoing education into Johnson's life and work.

I gave you a taste last week, and I wish I could give more. But space just does not allow. So right here at the start, I'll say that you should read this book.

Samuel Johnson — both the book and the character — grabbed my interest from that first sentence. It is immensely readable and absolutely full to the brim of life lessons about overcoming difficulties, finding and working towards your purpose, the beauty and faults and hopefulness of humanity; plus, especially interesting to a fellow who sometimes considers himself a writer, there is a veritable deluge to be learned on that particular craft.

In spite of my supreme book nerdiness, his was not a name I was all that familiar with. I had come across it in passing, but I distinctly remember having looked him up on Wikipedia numerous times simply because I could never remember who the guy was. And yet, as Bate noted, not only was Johnson just "fascinating," he was and is perhaps one of the top few quoted writers in the English language. You probably just don't realize it because his work has so constantly been built upon and riffed on.

From his truly epic dictionary (used by Austen, Dickens, Bronte, and more), to his voluminous essays, to his groundbreaking biographical sketches, he wrote enough to keep me busy for quite a long time.

Not only that, but he's the subject of what Bate calls "the most famous work of biographical art in the history of literature," to which "nothing comparable" exists in the annals of the genre: James Boswell's 1,400-page Life of Samuel Johnson (1791). I'm planning on reading that mountain of a book this year.

That particular combination — of first-person writings and biographical genius from both Boswell and Bate — makes for a man more interesting and more inspiring than just about any I've come across.

And so here I am, a few hundred words into this review of Bate's work, and I've only conveyed tangential information, barely even touching the substance of the book. Like any work (Johnson himself even critiqued Shakespeare), there are flaws: Bate gets a little too Freudian, and doesn't touch enough on The Club or Johnson's lasting legacy. Those flaws should be ignored. The real strength of Bate is in showing Johnson's utter humanity. Here was a man long wracked by self-guilt and who made annual resolutions to accomplish more. Here was a man about whom peers commented was "music" to hear speak in conversation. Here was a man who looked to be pleased rather than looked to be annoyed. What if that was everyone general disposition?

I loved this biography. It took me a full hour just to transcribe all my notes into Google Docs (for which the longer portions I just noted the page numbers to reference later), and my head is spinning with all that both man and biographer had to say.

Samuel Johnson is a book I'll long remember, and Samuel Johnson is a man I plan on spending I plan on spending a great deal of time with in the years to come.

Samuel Johnson

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