Acknowledgements List of Illustrations Notes on Contributors Preface Abbreviations Introduction Planning a Life of Johnson Attack and Mask: James Boswell's Indebtedness to Sir John Hawkins's Life of Johnson Boswell and the Making of Johnson 'The Casuistical Question': Oaths and Hypocrisy in the Writings of Johnson and Bolingbroke Fire under the Ashes: Johnson's Lives of the Poets as Narratives of History Johnson, Macpherson and the Memoirs of the Marshal Duke of Berwick Conclusion: The forgotten Room: Discovery and Denial in Recent Johnson Studies

A major academic controversy has raged in recent years over the analysis of the political and religious commitments of Samuel Johnson, the most commanding of the 'commanding heights' of eighteenth-century English letters. This book, one of a trilogy from Palgrave, brings that debate to a decisive conclusion, retrieving the 'historic Johnson.'

O M BRACK JR Professor Emeritus of English at Arizona State University, USA ADRIAN LASHMORE-DAVIES British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow in the Faculty of English, Cambridge University, UK F. P. LOCK Professor of English at Queen's University at Kingston, Canada NIALL MACKENZIE Lecturer in English and Humanities departments of Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada MURRAY PITTOCK Bradley Professor of English Literature and Dean of the Faculty of Arts at the University of Glasgow, UK