Biography and Controversy

For the past twenty years, a lot of controversy has swirled around the politics, broadly construed, of Samuel Johnson. This arose originally out of a salutary effort to separate Johnson as man and writer from the nineteenth century caricature offered by Macaulay. It sprang from brilliant corrective essays by Eliot and Leavis. Under academic auspices, however, it has been carried much too far. I will return to this issue in a moment. But first, the important book before us.

The late James L. Clifford’s second volume of Johnson biography is a peculiar one in several respects.