An Account Of Dr. Johnson's Dramatic Personal Life, Monumental Genius, And Boundless Literary Activities And Impact Follows Him From Poverty And Hack Work, Through Trial And Tumult, To Lionization As The Unchallenged Literary Arbiter Of His Times. Part I: The Formative Years -- Birth And Family; Early Illness -- First Years At School -- The Lichfield Upper Grammar School -- A Second Beginning: Cornelius Ford And The Year At Stourbridge -- Poems At Stourbridge -- Back At Lichfield; A Further Model; Gilbert Walmesley -- Oxford -- Part Ii: The Years Of Trial And Obscurity -- Breakdown And Despair; Psychology Of The Young Johnson -- Efforts To Begin Again; Birmingham; The First Book -- Johnson's Marriage; The School At Edial -- The Move To London; First Writings There; Temporary Separation From His Wife -- Range As A Journalist; Johnson's Politics Generally; Parliamentary Debates; Speed In Writing -- Lost In Grub Street; Biography And The World Of Books -- Part Iii: The Middle Of The Way: The Moral Pilgrimage -- Entrance Into Middle Age; Uncertainties; Problems In Marriage -- Storming The Main Gate; The Dictionary -- Personal Life; Tetty's Illness And Death; A Straggler -- The Moral Landscape; The Vanity Of Human Wishes And The Rambler -- The Condition Of Man: Johnson As Moralist -- Later Forties; Growing Difficulties; The Start On Shakespeare; Rasselas -- Into His Fifties; The Pension; Boswell; The Club -- Part Iv: The Johnson Legend -- Approaching Breakdown; Religious Struggles; Fear Of Insanity -- Shakespeare -- Toward Recovery; The Thrales; Law Lectures -- Early Sixties -- Writing; Continuing Religious Struggles -- Travel: The Hebrides; Wales -- Humor And Wit -- Indian Summer -- Lives Of The Poets -- Gathering Clouds; Death Of Henry Thrale -- Loss Of The Thrale Family; Failing Health -- Iam Moriturus. W. Jackson Bate. Includes Index. Bibliography: P. 601-602.

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