Details

Title

Life of Samuel Johnson, vol. 1

Author

Boswell, James

Publication Date

1906

Publisher

Dent

Place of Publication

London

Physical Description

print

Collection

Scans provided by and used with permission of Archival & Special Collections, University of Guelph Library. From the L.M. Montgomery Collection.

Note

The cover of this volume might appear plain and unassuming, but within the book lies evidence of many of Montgomery's connections to the wider world of literature and culture. This is Montgomery's copy of "The Life of Samuel Johnson" (first published in 1791) by James Boswell (1740-1795). "Boswell's Johnson" is considered a founding text in the genre of biography, and at the time of its publication, was considered groundbreaking. Unusual for its time, the biography is interspersed with personal conversations between the two men, conversations that didn't just focus on the public life and works of a great thinker, but incorporated personal details to paint a more intimate portrait. While the two spent considerable time speaking and corresponding, Boswell also highly edited, even censored, some of Johnson's conversation. Johnson (1709-1784), of course, is best known as a lexicographer who created one of the most influential (if not really "authoritative") dictionaries of the English language (that is, until the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary in the following century). Johnson took seven years compiling nearly 43,000 entries almost entirely by himself. While modern dictionaries pride themselves on objectively describing words as they are used and understood, Johnson took a few more liberties. His definition of "oats" for example, reads "a grain which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people." It is not surprising, though, that Montgomery owned a copy of Johnson's biography. It was and is an important text to literary critics and historians. In addition, the early pages of this copy show Montgomery's tendency to paste clippings and images into her books. After the inscription page, which reads "L.M. Montgomery Macdonald March 1916," and the title pages, Montgomery has added newspaper and magazine clippings of Boswell and Johnson. Her annotation on page 535 reads, "Johnson was wrong here." She was likely responding to Johnson's quoted opinion on Thomas Gray, "No, Sir, there are but two good stanzas in Gray's poetry, which are in his 'Elegy [Written] in a Country Churchyard.'" Montgomery certainly thought Gray was better than that, having quoted (and misquoted) from both "Elegy" and his "Progress of Poesy" multiple times in her journals, letters, and novels.

Genre

biography

Type of Item

association