Volume 20, Number 12 · July 19, 1973
Just Good Friends
By John Wain
The Impossible Friendship: Boswell and Mrs. Thrale
by Mary Hyde
Harvard, 196 pp., $7.50
Everyone with a serious interest in Samuel Johnson sooner or later reads not only Boswell's Life but also the Anecdotes written by Hester Salusbury under her third surname, Piozzi. Hester was, of course, Johnson's friend Mrs. Thrale, whose house at Streatham became a second home to Johnson between 1765 and 1780. The two books advertise a mutual enmity. In her book, Mrs. Piozzi snipes a few times at Boswell, and in a hastily written postscript indignantly denies the truth of a remark he has made, enpassant, that she 'could not get through' Mrs. Montague's book on Shakespeare.
Review, 1717 words
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