Volume 24, Number 18 · November 10, 1977
The Triumph of Dr. Johnson
By Irvin Ehrenpreis
Samuel Johnson
by W. Jackson Bate
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 646 pp., $19.95
W. J. Bate has produced a superb biography of Samuel Johnson. His sympathy admits the reader to Johnson's uneasiest emotions without harm to the hero's dignity. Even when he discusses sexual intimacies—Johnson's pathetic relation to a wife who refused to sleep with him, Johnson's soliciting of caresses from his wife's nurse-companion—Bate refuses to serve as voyeur or wisecracker, and keeps the narrative sympathetically respectful.
Review, 2803 words
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