{"product_id":"2026200017137-secondhand-samuel-johnson","title":"Samuel Johnson","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eCondition remarks:\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBook: Good\u003cbr\u003eJacket: Very good\u003cbr\u003ePages: Good\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFew figures in English literary history loom as large or as vividly as Samuel Johnson — and John Wain's acclaimed biography captures the full measure of this towering 18th-century intellect with remarkable depth and intimacy. Samuel Johnson chronicles the life of the celebrated lexicographer, critic, poet, and conversationalist from his humble origins in Lichfield, through the gruelling years of Grub Street struggle, to his eventual triumph as the most formidable literary authority of his age, immortalised by Boswell's famous account yet deserving of a fresh and searching reappraisal.\n\nWain, himself a distinguished novelist and Oxford Professor of Poetry, brings a rare fellow-feeling to his subject — one writer understanding another across the centuries — crafting a portrait that is as psychologically acute as it is historically rigorous. The biography illuminates Johnson's contradictions: a man tormented by melancholy yet celebrated for his wit, a committed moralist who was also a generous and fiercely loyal friend. Wain argues persuasively that Johnson's genius lay not merely in the monumental Dictionary or the Lives of the Poets, but in the very quality of his mind — restless, combative, and profoundly humane. For anyone who has ever wondered what it truly meant to be a man of letters in Georgian England, this biography offers an answer that is both definitive and endlessly compelling.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Secondhand Stock","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49269348958427,"sku":"2026200017137-SECONDHAND","price":20.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0523\/7646\/9701\/files\/4f7b4f89-3984-4875-bef8-780f05918c35.png?v=1788999118","url":"https:\/\/bookgrocer.com\/products\/2026200017137-secondhand-samuel-johnson","provider":"Book Grocer","version":"1.0","type":"link"}