JOHNSON, Samuel. TYERS, Thomas.

A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF SAMUEL JOHNSON by Thomas Tyers [in] The Gentleman's Magazine, Vol. 54 No 12, December 1784 issue.

London: 1784. First Edition (& 1st printing). Octavo, disbound, with original front cover. Pp 881-960 + 961-982, including the "Supplement for the Year 1784". 2 folding plates + 2 plates [one folding] in the supplement. The biography of Samuel Johnson by Thomas Tyers occupies Pp 899-911; it is the first posthumous biography of Johnson who died this same month, on December 13, 1784. Also included are "Original Letters by Samuel Johnson", plus which prints the text off six letters from Johnson, plus "The Will & Funeral of Samuel Johnson", Etc, Etc. Disbound, remnants off old leather on spine; Very Good overall. Item #314468

¶ 'A Biographical Sketch of Dr Samuel Johnson' was written by Thomas Tyers specialy for this issue of The Gentleman's Magazine's December 1784 issue. The work was written immediately after the death of Samuel Johnson and is the first postmortem biographical work on the author.

Tyers used his Biographical Sketch to discuss Johnson's mental state, but not everyone agreed with the way Tyers revealed Johnson's private life; Hester Thrale wrote, in her Anecdotes of the Late Samuel Johnson, "Poor Johnson! I see they will leave nothing untold that I laboured so long to keep secret; & I was so very delicate in trying to conceal his fancied Insanity." Regardless of what Thrale may have wanted, critics focused on Johnson's mental state from then after. In particular, John Wain emphasizes Tyers's description of Johnson as "like a ghost. He never speaks unless he is spoken to", which Wain considered a "bon mot". Likewise, Walter Jackson Bate relies on how Tyers was able to partly capture Johnson's "bisociative" ability to bring "together two different frames of experience". Tyers, when saying Johnson "said the most common things in the newest manner", describes Johnson's "unpredictability" and a "further process of mind in which the original shuffling of perspectives, already surprising us with elements we had overlooked or forgotten, is joined by considerations drawn from other matrices of experience that can only be described as 'moral,' that is, having to do with the condition of man - with human hopes and fears; with values, purpose or aim; with the shared sense, never forgotten, of the 'doom of man'; and with an unsleeping practical urgency in considering concretely what to do and how to live."

Price (CAD): $350.00