Dr. Johnson and His Circle

A London cabman reaches for a saying he thinks is Dr. Johnson’s: a man may travel the world and find nothing better than his dinner. The line may be invented—but why does it sound so perfectly like Johnson?

Writing more than a century after Samuel Johnson’s death, John Cann Bailey looks at a curious place in English life: Johnson’s books may be little read, yet his name feels familiar to almost everyone. He was a scholar, a celebrated talker, and, in Bailey’s portrait, a voice for plain sense and blunt honesty—the sort of man ordinary people could imagine themselves becoming. James Boswell’s vivid account let generations feel they knew him, but Bailey argues that Johnson’s hold began long before Boswell took up his pen. What made this difficult, unmistakable man seem so much like the country itself?

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