Books by John Hawkins

Samuel Johnson (1709-84) is the most significant English writer of the second half of the eighteenth century; indeed, this period is widely known as the Age of Johnson. This is an early Johnson biography, recovered from obscurity and reissued in celebration of the tercentenary of Johnson's birth.

This is the first and only scholarly edition of Sir John Hawkins's Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D., a work that has not been widely available in complete form for more than two hundred years. Published in 1787, some four years before James Boswell's biography of Johnson, Hawkins's Life complements, clarifies, and often corrects numerous aspects of Boswell's Life.

Sir John Hawkins (1719-1789), a lawyer and member of the Academy of Ancient Music, published his pioneering five-volume history in 1776 just after the first volume of Burney's. Despite Hawkins' work suffering badly in the resulting competition between the two, it is nonetheless of indispensable value to music scholars.