How charming! This is the way to read Boswell. ( )

15. Everybody’s Boswell is an abridged version of the full-length biography. I like this version because you are almost immediately swept into the action of Boswell’s lively exchanges with Johnson. The first 200 pages of the full-length biography are boring hagiography which, using the 50 page rule, you would never get to the most entertaining part. In Everybody’s Boswell, you get only the introductory highlights and then comes the famous meeting and sheer pleasure follows. Also there is the additional delight of 54 full-page drawings by Ernest H Shepherd plus the Tour to the Hebrides which is not in the biography. ( )