Peter Martin has taught English on both sides of the Atlantic and is the author of A Life of James Boswell and Samuel Johnson: A Biography.
Readers should find much pleasure and insight in this collection.
-- Anthony Pucci * Library Journal *
We see in [Johnson's] essays the tiny brushwork of brilliant
self-portraiture; we hear the rhythm of moral seriousness, the
sound of contemplation as it engages with the questions of how to
live and how to manage in the face of death. But most of all we
feel the reach of an author--a writer attempting to reach past
self-doubt, poverty, cant, and orthodoxy, in order to assert the
power of individual authorship and free thinking in the face of
more nebulous authorities. Samuel Johnson may have failed often
enough to be personable, but he nevertheless freed
subjectivity...and brought both dignity and self-sufficiency to the
writing game, allowing authors to be who they chose to be,
unshackled from patronage and the requirement to please great men.
We see it in his essays and we see it again in his Lives of the
Poets: a writer's writer, beckoning individual creative power
out of the mire of dependency, making the work answerable only to
high standards of excellence stringently applied. -- Andrew O'Hagan
* New York Review of Books *
This handsome book, with its fine printing and striking cover,
commemorates the 2009 tercentennial of Johnson's birth by
introducing uninitiated readers to the most accessible of his
writing, Martin satisfies this aim well, producing a title that
serves as a companion to his Samuel Johnson: A Biography. --
C. S. Vilmar * Choice *
Peter Martin, who joined the crowded ranks of Johnson's biographers
last year, has given us a fair representation of [his] works
here...Harvard Press deserves lavish praise for producing a
handsome, well-made edition. -- Barton Swaim * Weekly Standard *
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