 The biography contains many details of Savage's account of his own life, including claims that he was the illegitimate child of a noble family that quickly disowned and abandoned him at birth.Savage had led a controversial life, and Johnson used the material to try to answer some wider ethical questions.The text was later included in "The Lives of the Poets", published in 1779, and this work is attributed as one of the important steps for Johnson becoming a biographer in his later years.