Life of Mr Richard Savage

[1] The biography contains many details of Savage's account of his own life, including claims that he was the illegitimate child of a noble family that quickly disowned and abandoned him at birth.

[4] Savage was both a poet and a playwright, and Johnson was reported to enjoy spending time and discussing various topics with him, along with drinking and other merriment.

[8] Johnson dedicated a large portion of his time to the work, and was able to produce, as he claimed, "forty-eight of the printed octavo pages of the life of Savage at a sitting, but then I sat up all night.

[10] Joshua Reynolds, Johnson's friend, told James Boswell that "It seized his attention so strongly that, not being able to lay down the book till he had finished it, when he attempted to move, he found his arm totally benumbed.

[11] Margaret Lane writes that the Life of Savage "is still the most absorbing of all Johnson's brief biographies and its news value at the time made it compulsive reading.