Samuel Johnson is often represented as an enmity or sympathizer mainly with Milton. However, his imaginative and intellectual connection extended to Milton's life and writings throughout his entire range of writing career. As an essayist, poet, preacher, critic, biographer - above all reader - Johnson developed a controversial, fascinating and fruitful literary relationship with his powerful predecessor.

To understand how Johnson creatively delineated Milton's texts, and how he defiantly challenges so far, he also confirms Milton's status, and how he builds on it as a subject for biography, is to deepen the reader's modern understanding of both books in the context of historical continuity and change. Christine Reese's in-depth study will be of interest not only to the Milton and Johnson specialists, but to all researchers in modern literary history and biography..

I want that book.