The design on the cover is from one of the "copper pieces struck at Birmingham with his [Johnson's] head impressed on them." They passed current, as Boswell tells us, "as half-pence there, and in the neighbouring parts of the country." Acknowledgment is made to Messrs Sidgwick and Jackson Ltd for supplying the block of the Boswell portrait; to Messrs George Routledge & Sons Ltd for permission to reproduce the pictures facing p. 88 from Doran's Annals of the English Stage (ed. Lowe, 1888); and to Messrs Emery Walker Ltd for permission to reproduce the portrait of Garrick facing p. 92.
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