Abstract: Samuel Johnson is the greatest leader in British literary circle in the late eighteenth century. Since the publication of his Life of Savage, its nature positioned by critics has changed greatly from biography to autobiography and finally to biography; the reception of Johnson’s portrayal of biographee Savage from truth to fiction and to nearly truth. Although the critics have multiple interpretations towards this work, they agree on one point：Life of Savage is a masterpiece which has epochal and universal significance.

Key words: Samuel Johnson; Life of Savage; Biography; Fiction

Dr. Sun Yongbin is Professor of English in School of Foreign Languages at Nanjing University of Finance and Economics, China. His research areas are English literature and Canadian literature. He is chairing a project on Samuel Johnson’s Lives of the English Poets which is supported by the China National Social Science Fund (IN. 15BWW041). He published a paper entitled “The Psychological Constitution of Emily Carr’s Creation of Painting” in Art and Design in 2013. Email: syongbin@gmail.com