Few men in history have ever been known as intimately as Samuel Johnson. Famous in his own time for his wit and wisdom, he has had the rare good fortune to gain a posthumous extension of personality and influence over a period of more than one hundred and sixty years. James Boswell's boast that Johnson would "be seen in this work more completely than any man who has ever yet lived" has been borne out in the greatest biography in the English language. To give the modern reader the spirit and substance of Johnson's life and times, Bergen Evans, Professor of English at Northwestern University, has winnowed out the obscurities and irrelevances of the full text and kept its essence.