George Birkbeck Norman Hill

Educated at Pembroke College, Oxford, George Birkbeck Norman Hill went on to become a Fellow there and built a reputation as a careful literary scholar and editor. He is most closely associated with Samuel Johnson and James Boswell, subjects he studied with unusual depth and persistence.

Hill is especially remembered for his influential edition of Boswell’s Life of Johnson, a major scholarly achievement of the late 19th century. He also edited the letters of David Hume to William Strahan and wrote works connected with Johnson’s world, including Footsteps of Dr. Johnson (Scotland).

Born in 1835 and dying in 1903, he belongs to the generation of Victorian editors who helped turn literary biography and textual scholarship into serious, lasting work. His books remain of interest not just for their subject matter, but for the standards of research and annotation he brought to them.