James Boswell

Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson, published in 1791, invented the modern biography by putting the subject's own talk on the page. For two decades Boswell noted Johnson's conversation almost verbatim in his journals, then shaped it into scenes, so readers meet a melancholy, funny, contrary man rather than a dictionary-maker on a plinth. The method has limits: Boswell stages himself and played down the women in Johnson's life, such as Hester Thrale. Read it in an abridgement first, then dip into Boswell's London Journal to see the note-taker at work.