Who here has read what is said to be the "best biography ever written" ?
I've read Boswell's London Journal, from when he was a young man of twenty-two or twenty-three...and it was nothing less than brilliant! I can't tell you what a pleasure it was to read his accounts of trying (and eventually succeeding) to sleep with a well-known actress of his time, corresponding with various intellectual giants like Hume and, of course, Johnson...and above all, his ability to keep such a well-written and ample journal, with entries almost daily, in a time before typewriters or word processors, AND in the midst of such a busily debauched lifestyle.
I've read parts of the Life, and found Johnson to be one of the most verbally impressive characters I've ever read. Soon I will climb the entire twelve-hundred-page mountain.
Who has read this, and what do you think--of Boswell, Johnson, and the writings by or about them?