Samuel Johnson: a biography

List of Illustrations

Preface

Part 1. Staffordshire Youth

1. Anecdotes of Beggary

2. Stepping on the Duckling

3. Leaping over the Rail

4. Two Benefactors

Part 2. Despondency and Hope

5. Oxford: Wielding a Scholar's Weapon

6. Horrible Imaginings

7. Stirrings in Birmingham

8. Taking a Wife

Part 3. Slow Rises Worth

9. Stranger in London

10. Sons of Misery: Finding Richard Savage

11. 'Slow Rises Worth by Poverty Depress'd'

12. Wandering in the Midlands

Part 4. Triumph: The Dictionary Years

13. London Revived: A Lion in Harness

14. A Lifeline: The Dictionary

15. Poetic Interludes

16. Tetty and 'Amorous Propensities'

17. The Triumph of the Moralist

18. Darkness Falls

19. Once More unto the Breach: Back to the Dictionary

Part 5. Depression, Shakespeare, Travel and Anger

20. Stalled

21. 'Suffering Chimeras'

22. 'Vain and Corrupt Imaginations'

23. Boswell and Mrs Thrale

24. Shakespeare and the Living World

25. Coliseum of Beasts

26. Back to Shakespeare and the Dictionary

27. The Road to the Hebrides

28. Politics and Travel

Part 6. Biography and 'The Race with Death'

29. 'A Very Poor Creeper upon the Earth'

30. Biographical Straitjacket

31. Losing Ground

32. The Last Days

Notes

Bibliography

Acknowledgments

Index