Boswell is best known for his massive biography of Samuel Johnson.

Although Boswell was not the first biographer in the English language,
he is almost certainly the first modern biographer. His Life of Samuel
Johnson is itself a literary masterwork. Indeed, some critics contest that
much of Johnson's fame rests not so much on the quality of his own
writings as on the writings of James Boswell. Prior to Boswell, the
biographical form had been reserved for dry, scholarly works that
reiterated facts and dates in an accurate but uninteresting manner.
Boswell's Life of Johnson revolutionised this form by adding an entirely
novel and charming personal flair; Boswell wrote about Johnson as if he
were someone the reader might intimately know. He incorporated casual
conversations between Johnson and himself into the text of his
biography, and his ability to interweave personal anecdotes with factual
information was so deft that the line between literary narrative and
biographical scholarship was entirely blurred. The result of Boswell's Life
of Johnson was so successful that it is still considered by many to be the
finest biography ever written, securing Johnson's (and Boswell's) place
at the focal point of eighteenth-century English literature.

The book is valuable as a chronicle of the complex friendship of Johnson

and Boswell, two men of different ages and backgrounds who share a
deep intellectual affinity. Their conversations cover such varied topics as
religion, politics, law, literature, and morality. The book as a whole
testifies to the evolving phenomenon of celebrity, as shown in Boswell’s
obsession to give the public all the available information about Johnson.

Summary
Johnson was born in 1709 in Lichfield, England; his parents belong to
the middle class and are both “well advanced in years” (27) when
Johnson is born. Johnson is often sick as a child and has scrofula (a form
of tuberculosis), which affects the appearance of his face and causes
weak eyesight, something that will affect him for the rest of his life.
However, he also quickly begins to show signs of exceptional
intelligence, memorising some of the contents of the Book of Common
Prayer. Johnson excels in school and begins to write poems and
translations from Latin verse when he is 16. However, his academic
future remains in doubt because his father, a bookseller, is deeply in
debt.
Johnson enrolled at Oxford University in 1728, where he hones his skill
in Greek and Latin and in writing poetry. However, after three years at
university, Johnson runs out of money and is forced to return home
without a degree.
Back home in Lichfield, Johnson goes through a period of physical and
mental anguish. He tries to become a schoolteacher but is rejected
because he does not have a degree. When he is finally accepted as a
teaching assistant, he is soon forced to leave the school after an
argument with the headmaster. With the help of his friend Thomas
Warren, a book publisher, Johnson begins producing translated and
annotated books.
After Warren’s death, Johnson marries his widow, Elizabeth, who is 20
years his senior. Johnson continues to support his new family with his
translation work and with tutoring the children of local prominent
families. In 1735, Johnson opened a private school which failed soon
after, taking with it a significant portion of Elizabeth’s fortune. However,
one of Johnson’s students, David Garrick, travels to London to become
an actor. He invites Johnson to join him there and helps him secure
work writing for The Gentleman’s Magazine.
Johnson’s contributions to the magazine include an allegorical poem,
London, which earns him praise and comparisons to England’s leading
poet, Alexander Pope. Around this time Johnson also finished a play, the
historical tragedy Irene, which Garrick eventually produced on the
stage in 1749. Johnson’s reputation as a brilliant writer grows by leaps
and bounds, and he makes the acquaintance of many of the famous
intellectuals of the time, including David Hume, Sir Joshua Reynolds,
and Oliver Goldsmith. He also earns the reputation of an eccentric, due
to the tics that are probably symptoms of Tourette syndrome, and has
periods of depression.
Boswell explains his intention to depict Johnson’s complete life, and so
does not shy away from writing about his illness as well as some of the
more ludicrous or less flattering aspects of his personality. He says he
did not set out to write only praise about Johnson, but to show the
entirety of his life, the good and the bad.
In 1746, some publishers pitched to Johnson the idea of writing a
complete dictionary of the English language. Johnson surprises them by
saying that he wants to complete the book on his own instead of with a
team of scholars. Johnson worked on the Dictionary for eight years with
the help of a small secretarial staff, and it was finally published in 1755.
In anticipation of the publication of the Dictionary, Oxford University
awards Johnson an honorary degree. In addition, when George III
accedes to the British throne, he awards Johnson a pension which allows
him to live comfortably for the rest of his life. In return, Johnson writes
occasional pamphlets supporting the government’s side in controversial
political topics. During this period Johnson also published the allegorical
novel Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia, and The Rambler, a collection of his
magazine essays.
Boswell meets Johnson in 1763, and they form an instant friendship.
Boswell sees Johnson whenever he is in London on business, and the two
men enjoy frequent conversation and meals together, often in the
presence of the other members of the Literary Club which Johnson forms
in 1764. In 1773, Johnson travels to Scotland to visit Boswell at home,
and the two men take a tour of the country which is recounted in two
separate works by Boswell and Johnson.
By the 1770s, Johnson was showing signs of deteriorating health but
continued to work; his later productions include an annotated edition of
the works of Shakespeare and the ten-volume Lives of the English Poets.
In 1783, Johnson had a stroke and momentarily lost his ability to speak,
although he was still able to write about his Melancholy and Fear of
Death. Johnson died on December 13, 1784, and Boswell concludes the
book by expressing his view that Johnson’s works and reputation will
endure.
Write a note on G. K. Chesterton as an
essayist.

Introduction
G. K. Chesterton is regarded as the best writer of the 20th century. He
said something about everything and he said it better than anybody else.
But he was not a mere wordsmith. He was very good at expressing
himself, but more importantly, he had something very good to express.
He was not only the greatest writer of the 20th century but also he was
the greatest thinker of the 20th century. He was a critic, a novelist and a
poet of rank, but he was also an essayist of repute. He used to write in
the columns of Daily News upon all manner of books and upon nearly
every subject under the sun. He used to sit and write his articles and
essays in Fleet Street Cafe.

The Use of Satire, Wit and Paradox

Chesterton caught the infection of satire and epigram during the
nineties, but he used these weapons for the defence of constructive
principles, old faiths and venerable institutions especially the Catholic
Church, and for laughing down the sleeping pretensions of science and
modern thought. His chief weapons are wit and paradox. His strength as
a writer lies in the clear and witty way in which he expresses common
place truths. To those out of contact with the fundamental beliefs which
inspired his joyous argumentativeness, he might appear a buffoon
intoxicated by his own flow of wit and paradox.

A Wide Range of His Essays and Columns

Chesterton was an essayist who wrote a regular column for much of his
life. Many of his books are collections of his essays and columns,
covering a wide range of subjects, so that the collections titles are like:
All Things Considered, All is Grist, Generally Speaking, and so on.
Chesterton first came to public notice with his critical essays-both social
and literary. His collection of essays entitled What’s Wrong With the
World (1910) brought him attention along with Hilaire Belloc, as a
leading advocate for Distributism. Chesterton is perhaps most popularly
known as the author of the father Brown detective series. which he wrote
from the early 1900s into the 1930s. The stories were collected in The
Innocence of Father (1911), The Wisdom of Father Brown (1927), and
The Scandal of Father Brown (1935). Chesterton spent a month of 1927
in Poland, a nation whose true place in Europe he held high. Two years
later his visit to Rome resulted in The Resurrection of Rome (1930). His
more successful books of this period were his Catholic essays. The Thing
(1929), and two volumes of general essays. Come to Think of It (1930)
and All is Grist (1931).

His Prose Style

Chesterton writes with a perpetual relish for facts, he knows the habits of
men and women as a reporter knows them. He is positive, dogmatic, and
sudden in his statements and seems to find a great deal of fun in
speaking extravagantly to an age which has been trained to accept only
qualified judgement to be sceptical about everything. His style has the
quality of self-consciousness. He never shows his ideas with any external
embellishments. He knows how to express one’s qualities. He eschews
the modern trend of finding out a reason for everything. His aim is to
revive the traditional doctrines.