An Account of the Life of Mr. Richard Savage, Son of the Earl Rivers

…publication of this period was An Account of the Life of Mr. Richard Savage, Son of the Earl Rivers (1744). If, as Johnson claimed, the best biographies were written by those who had eaten and drunk and “lived in social intercourse” with their subjects, this was the most likely of…

…poetic biographies, including the multifaceted An Account of the Life of Mr. Richard Savage (1744). These last lives, covering the period from Cowley to the generation of Gray, show Johnson’s mastery of the biographer’s art of selection and emphasis and (together with the preface and notes to his Shakespeare edition)…