This book revolves around Thomas Babington Macaulay's perspective of Samuel Johnson, an English writer who made lasting contributions through his publication of A Dictionary of the English Language. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography calls him "arguably the most distinguished man of letters in English history."

Focuses on the struggles and pressures which attended the literary career of the eighteenth-century figure

With great wit, Sisman here tells the story of Boswell's presumptuous task--the making of the greatest biography of all time. Sisman traces the friendship between Boswell and Samuel Johnson, his mentor, and provides a fascinating account of Boswell's seven-year struggle to write "The Life of Samuel Johnson."