Reading Samuel Johnson examines how the eighteenth-century author, lexicographer, and wit, Samuel Johnson was later read and represented by writers between 1750 to 1970. The writers range from James Boswell and Jane Austen to Lord Byron and Samuel Beckett. The book focuses as much on these later writers as on Johnson himself. It also examines how Johnson sought to understand himself, and how later writers responded to or ignored Johnson's own self-understanding...