After many years (about fifty-two) of having heard references to James Boswell and Samuel Johnson, I've broken down and am finally reading James Boswell's Life Of Samuel Johnson, LLD. Published in about 1780 or so, I believe. The book that effectively set the modern formula for writing biographies.

And there are so many references to Johnson's "Great Work", his Dictionary of the English Language (about 1750), in the biography, I got the library to get it for me--or that is, a volume of selections from that first "modern" dictionary.

When I was at the University of Minnesota those many years ago, I was very backward with the girls, so my "little black book" that someone gave me was filled instead with listings of books that I intended some day to read. One of those books, listed in say 1952, was (lo and behold) Boswell's Life Of Samuel Johnson, LLD. Only a little lag of 52 years there.

Dave Oesterreich