The Life of Samuel Johnson

A Note on the Text

The Life of Samuel Johnson was first published in two volumes in 1791. A second edition, ‘revised and augmented’, followed in 1793. At virtually the same time, shortly after 9 August 1793, a slim companion volume, The Principal Corrections and Additions to the First Edition of Mr. Boswell’s Life of Dr. Johnson, was published, the purpose of which was to supply purchasers of the first edition with all the additional material incorporated into the second edition.

Boswell continued to collect material relevant to the Life, but after his death in 1795 it fell to Edmond Malone, who had played a crucial role in the publication of the Life from the very beginning (see above, ‘Introduction’, p. xiv, and p. xli, n. 10), to bring out in 1799 a four-volume edition of the Life, once more described as ‘revised and augmented’.

The copy-text for this edition is the third edition of 1799. Minor errors have been silently corrected, and certain aspects of presentation have been regularized when to do so posed no threat to meaning: specifically, un-spaced em dashes have been replaced by spaced en dashes; an em dash has been used to indicate names or parts of names omitted in the text; a two-em dash has been used to indicate omissions in passages of poetry; and punctuation after a word or phrase in italics has always been made roman. Unless otherwise indicated, footnotes in square brackets are Malone’s; other material in square brackets is Boswell’s, and material in curly brackets is editorial. Footnote reference numbers have been replaced by letters, to avoid confusion with endnote references.

A selection of the most substantial variants between the third edition of 1799 and the two earlier editions of 1793 and 1791 is given in Appendix 1. Appendix 2 contains a selection of the most interesting variants between the manuscript of the Life (currently being prepared for publication by Bruce Redford) and the text of the Life as printed.