One of the most important individuals in English literature is presented in Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson with a level of immediateness and originality that is unmatched. We owe our understanding of Johnson the man to this biography, despite the fact that his Dictionary continues to stand as a monument to scholarship and that his essays and criticism continue to be respected. Johnson is revealed as a social character with a voracious taste for life through a succession of exquisitely described anecdotes. He engages in conflict with other great eighteenth-century figures like Garrick, Goldsmith, Burney, and Burke, as well as his patient friend and pupil James Boswell. However, Johnson had a weak, even sad, side, and his private moments were plagued by concerns and obsessions. This biography is only as moving as Boswell's understanding of every aspect of his subject's character and his sensitivity to those traits.