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Rating: 
Summary: A Great Writer Writing About a Great Writer
Review: Anyone who has read and been fascinated with Boswell's Life of Johnson will do well to read this book.Peter Martin has done a bang-up job of bringing Boswell to life, extensively quoting from his journals and letters, narrating the stories of his Grand Tour,the meetings with Rousseau and Voltaire,and his friendships with the likes of Burke, Reynolds,Goldsmith,Garrick,and of course,Johnson. Boswell's "hypochondria",or chronic depression, is a main topic,and we see how it affected his marriage,his friendships,and his writings.A must read for all Johnsonians and anglophiles.
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Summary: Fabulous and lively history
Review: Dr. Martin writes with unabashed affection about his subject, making for lively, energetic reading. This book pours life into a literary figure who, in less caring hands, could have been made out to be dead dull.
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Summary: Honestly, I can't finish this, but not enthralled so far.
Review: I think it's healthy for a biographer to love his subject, because a fine biography takes years of effort. But there are many points where I feel as if Martin's love for his subject -- assuming he loves Boswell -- obstructs a properly critical perspective. As someone who loves Johnson's works, I've tried really hard to be open to this biography, but I can't go on. Perhaps others who love Boswell as much as Martin does will have less difficulty than I do. But I cannot. If you DO love Boswell, then take my opinions with a grain of salt.I have read about 20% of this (I am trying to be honest with you here, so don't ding me...) But some of Martin's descriptions of Boswell are SO effusive, I can't go on. If you read Bate's biography of Johnson, you never doubted his love for Johnson, but you probably felt that Bate was being even-handed. But Martin doesn't strike me this way. Discussing Boswell's "London Journal," Martin writes, "the world has come to see it as a literary masterpiece." Hello? Sure, we all loved to read about the peccadilloes, and enjoyed it, but a 'literary masterpiece'? Like "Hamlet"? "Absalom, Absalom"? "Ulysses"? "The Vanity of Human Wishes"? I am very curious about the world Martin refers to here. The effusiveness continues a couple pages later, when Martin expresses thanks (that's OK) that Boswell didn't suppress himself in the journals, but the tone - - "We must thank the literary muses who watched over him that he did not succeed against his better literary judgement..." Leading to this stage in London, there are many many pages where Martin works to forgive a tendency in Boswell which I would call flightiness, but Martin attributes to Boswell's artistic tendency and difficulties in conforming to his surroundings. Part of me wants to respond in a way I suspect Johnson would have: get serious. Martin also never seems to weigh in on Boswell's affairs with married women - - should we read Martin's silence as his condoning? Please forgive me here if I post this review without having read further. But if I can't finish it - - and I have finished a number of 'difficult' books, and some that are poorly written, you disregard this at your own risk.
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Summary: A Great Writer Writing About a Great Writer
Review: James Boswell's "Life of Johnson" is commonly regarded as the finest biography in the English language. For 155 years after his death, Boswell was known primarily for this great work. But then in 1949 through 1951, in a series of three separate discoveries, Boswell's journal was found. Boswell is now also regarded as one of history's best diarists. Boswell was a libertine and at times a heavy drinker who, no matter how inebriated he became at the London Literary Club, where he listened to Garrick, Goldsmith, Burke, Reynolds and other brilliant men discuss the topics of the day, would race home to enter their conversation in his journal. So he preserved much of Samuel Johnson's wit ("Fishing: a stick and a string, a fish on one end and a fool on the other.") and philosophy. Peter Martin concludes that Boswell's journal is the best reading that exists regarding London in the late 1700s. Martin's book is an exhaustively researched and beautifully written account of an eccentric, gifted man.
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Summary: Still Searching
Review: This is an ample and competent biography of the man who gave us what is termed our first "modern" biography. But, in the end, I think Boswell's biography of Johnson and his other writings (The famous Boswell papers etc) actually reveal more about the man than any biography of Boswell himself I've run across. Martin's accounts of Boswell's seemingly pathological obsession with sex and death make interesting reading, as accounts of sex and death generally do; but couldn't we have more reflection from the biographer here on these matters, a bit more involvement with the subject than the encomia noted by another reviewer? Boswell's ghost is still searching for a biographer as good as he.
Rating:
Summary: Still Searching
Review: This is an ample and competent biography of the man who gave us what is termed our first "modern" biography. But, in the end, I think Boswell's biography of Johnson and his other writings (The famous Boswell papers etc) actually reveal more about the man than any biography of Boswell himself I've run across. Martin's accounts of Boswell's seemingly pathological obsession with sex and death make interesting reading, as accounts of sex and death generally do; but couldn't we have more reflection from the biographer here on these matters, a bit more involvement with the subject than the encomia noted by another reviewer? Boswell's ghost is still searching for a biographer as good as he.
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