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SAMUEL JOHNSON: DEAN OF CONTEMPORARY BIOGRAPHERS.(Critical Essay)

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From: Biography
Date: 20010322
Author:ROLLYSON, CARL

In The Rambler, No. 60, Saturday, October 13, 1750, Samuel Johnson published a description of biography that has never been surpassed. He wrote about biography with a generosity and firmness that I have found lacking in other accounts of the genre. Biographers and their critics have treated the subject with defensiveness and hostility. Since Johnson, writing about biography has been an exercise in apologetics and in skepticism. As a practicing biographer, and as a scholar of biography, I read The Rambler, No. 60, as the only statement of first principles that evokes the genre's ...

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