Kernan picks up the image of Johnson where recent biographers left off. Samuel Johnson, he sums up, was 'skeptical, deeply troubled in mind, mad at times, neurotic nearly always, radically doubtful of himself and of the social values he at the same time so stoutly defended.' To that 'existential Johnson,' Kernan adds an image of Johnson as a model of success in the emergent print culture. This makes for fascinating reading.