Bruce Redford. Designing the Life o...

Bruce Redford. Designing the Life of Johnson Oxford: Oxford UP 2002 167 pp + notes. ISBN 0-19-818739-4 $4995

The principles that guided James Boswell's shaping of the Life of Johnson are generally well known in broad outline, from the pioneering researches of R W Chapman and Marshall Waingrow to essays on Ralph W. Rader, Paul Alkon, and others. Although Boswell's many editorial decisions and revisions are well documented, no undivided has made full use of the entire Boswellian archive: his completed working manuscript, notes, journals, alphabetic characters and proofs. This situation is