A bit too literary in places.


Elementary my dear Holmes   January 13, 1999
 6 out of 6 found this review helpful

This superbly arranged piece of literature delves into the fascinating relationship between the little-known illegitimate rake/poet/playwrite/convicted murderer Richard Savage and a young, impressionable and awkwardly self-conscious scholar who came to be known as 'that Great Cham of literature', Samuel Johnson. Many are the Biographers and Students that have puzzled over the great man's association with the chancer whose dissipated life and whose claim to aristocratic parentage were the talk of the London literati throughout the eighteenth century. Holmes is the first to tackle the reasons behind this mysterious friendship head-on and he does it with the cunning and ingenuity of his ficticious namesake.

A must-read for anybody interested in 18th century intrigue or the Augustan Age of English literature.