Dr. Samuel Johnson was a poet, essayist, dramatist, and lexicographer. Having spent a great deal of time with Johnson in his final years, Boswell was able to record faithfully the brilliance and wit of Dr. Johnson’s conversations. Boswell painstakingly transforms scholarly profusion of detail into a perceptive, lifelike portrait of Johnson. Further, Boswell’s work stands as a paean to biography as a literary tradition.