Zachary Leader, Ellmann’s Joyce: The Biography of a Masterpiece and Its Maker

When Zachary Leader’s book was announced, I thought hard about its precedents: books about books—not literary criticism but accounts of the gritty, human production of really famous tomes. A niche genre. But then Boswell’s Life of Johnson came to mind and a quick Google search revealed Richard B. Sher’s 2023 study of precisely that: Making Boswell’s Life of Johnson. I for one would love to read it.