James Boswell's Life of Johnson
first edition, first state in handsome contemporary bindings

"An honourable and reverend friend speaking of the favourable reception of my volumes, even in the circles of fashion and elegance, said to me, 'you have made them all talk Johnson.'--Yes, I may add, I have Johnsonised the land; and I trust they will not only talk, but think, Johnson."

-James Boswell 

First edition, first state (with page 135, line 10 "gve") of the most famous and most beloved biography ever written.

"Anyone interested in biography soon becomes interested in Boswell's Life of Johnson. It stands next to other biographies as Shakespeare stands beside other playwrights: towering above them all. For more than two centuries it has been continually in print, and in that time it has won innumerable admirers. No other biography has given so much pleasure; no other biographer has created such a vivid central character. It has become a truism that, as a result of Boswell's extraordinary book, Samuel Johnson is better known to us than any other man in history" (Sisman, Boswell's Presumptuous Task, xv).

With engraved frontispiece portrait of Johnson by Heath after Reynolds, and two engraved plates in vol. 2. Dampstaining to margin of one plate, early marginal notes to a few leaves; light occasional foxing and light wear to bindings; ownership stamp on endpaper. A very handsome copy in contemporary bindings.