James Boswell

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Boswell, detail of an oil painting from the studio of Sir Joshua Reynolds, 1786; in the National … (credit: Courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, London)

(born Oct. 29, 1740, Edinburgh, Scot. — died May 19, 1795, London, Eng.) Scottish friend and biographer of Samuel Johnson. Boswell, a lawyer, met Johnson in 1763 and visited him often (1772 – 84), making a superlatively detailed record in his journals of Johnson's conversations. His two-volume Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. (1791) is regarded as one of the greatest English biographies. His Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides (1785) is mainly an account of Johnson's responses to their 1773 trip to Scotland. The 20th-century publication of Boswell's journals showed him to have been also one of the world's greatest diarists.

For more information on James Boswell, visit Britannica.com.

The Scottish biographer and diarist James Boswell (1740-1795), who wrote "The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D"., published in 1791, ranks as the greatest biographer in the history of Western literature. His private papers also reveal "Bozzie" as a most distinguished diarist.

James Boswell was born in Edinburgh on Oct. 29, 1740. He was the eldest of the three sons of the advocate Alexander Boswell, Lord of Auchinleck in Ayrshire from 1749, and Euphemia Erskine Boswell. The Boswells were an old and well-connected family, having held the barony of Auchinleck since 1504 and having intermarried with the nobility.

Early Life

As a child, Boswell was delicate and suffered from some type of nervous ailment. At 13 he enrolled in the arts course at the University of Edinburgh, studying there from 1753 to 1758. Midway in his studies he suffered a serious depression and nervous illness, but when he recovered he had thrown off all signs of delicacy and attained robust health. Boswell had swarthy skin, black hair, and dark eyes; he was of average height, and he tended to plumpness. His appearance was alert and masculine, and he had an ingratiating sense of good humor.

In 1759 Boswell matriculated at the University of Glasgow, continuing to prepare himself for a legal career. In 1760 he ran away to London, where the Earl of Eglinton introduced him to his circle of friends, including Laurence Sterne. Dazzled by metropolitan culture and by women, whom Boswell now discovered were attracted to him and he to them, Boswell determined to remain permanently in the capital by obtaining a commission in the Foot Guards.

Lord Auchinleck fetched Boswell home in June 1760, thereby beginning a 3-year struggle with his son, who by now was in open rebellion. Boswell studied law at home until he passed his trials in civil law in July 1762, spending part of his free time scribbling verse that showed little merit. Still stubborn in his London plans, he worked out a compromise with his father whereby the elder Boswell agreed to supplement his annuity and to permit him to seek a guards commission in London.

Boswell, in anticipation of this trip, began in the fall of 1762 his journal. He wrote everything down, imaginatively reconstructing events. His generousness of mind enabled him to elicit memorable conversation from those he met, and he dramatically reported it in his journal.

Boswell's second London visit lasted from November 1762 to August 1763. During this period he met both Oliver Goldsmith and John Wilkes, and on May 16, 1793, he received an unexpected introduction to Samuel Johnson, whose works he greatly admired, in a bookseller's back parlor. Boswell called on Johnson a week later, and their friendship was cemented. Soon Boswell, convinced he could not obtain a guards commission, gave in to his father's desire for him to become a lawyer. He agreed to spend the winter studying civil law at Utrecht, Holland.

Johnson made a 4-day journey to Harwich to see Boswell off to Holland. After a year of study in Utrecht, whose sole redeeming feature was his courtship of Belle de Zuylen (Zélide), Boswell embarked on a grand tour (1764-1766). In Switzerland he obtained interviews with both Jean Jacques Rousseau and Voltaire. Boswell spent 9 months sight-seeing in Italy, and in the autumn of 1765 made a 6 weeks' tour of Corsica in order to interview Pasquale Paoli, the Corsican leader who was attempting to secure the island's freedom from Genoa. Boswell and Paoli became lifelong friends, and Boswell's Corsican visit later provided the basis for his first important publication.

Career and Marriage

Boswell received admission to the faculty of advocates of the Scottish bar on July 26, 1766. For the next 17 years he successfully practiced law in Edinburgh, making as he said a better lawyer than could have been expected from one "pressed into service." Until 1784 his cherished trips to London were made only during vacations and not, to his regret, annually. In 1768 Boswell published An Account of Corsica, the Journal of a Tour to That Island, and Memoirs of Pascal Paoli, the first of his works to be based on his journal.

Between the time of his arrival in Edinburgh to practice law and 1769, Boswell amused himself - meantime maintaining a liaison with a divorcee, by whom he had a child - by pursuing not too earnestly a series of Scottish, English, and Irish heiresses. Eventually, on Nov. 25, 1769, he married an impoverished first cousin, Margaret Montgomerie. Boswell and his wife ultimately had five children.

During the first years of his marriage, Boswell was happy, hardworking, and chaste. In August-November 1773 he made his famous tour of the Hebrides with Dr. Johnson. That year Boswell was also elected to membership in The Club. By 1776, however, Boswell had begun to have intimations of failure - he had failed a government position, his practice had not become more notable, and he had returned to heavy drinking and to whoring.

Between 1777 and 1783 Boswell contributed a series of 70 essays to the London Magazine under the title of "The Hypochondriack." His succession to Auchinleck in 1782, following his father's death, made Boswell an important man in Ayrshire and encouraged him to concentrate upon a political career. Unsuccessful in his application to several ministries, he finally pinned his hopes on William Pitt the Younger and Henry Dundas, the political manager of Scotland. His well-received pamphlet attacking Charles James Fox's East India Bill, A Letter to the People of Scotland, issued in 1783, did not gain him political preferment, however, and so in a second pamphlet, with the same title, published in 1785, Boswell turned against Dundas. By alienating him, Boswell blocked any hope of a political career in Scotland.

Life of Johnson

Samuel Johnson died on Dec. 13, 1784, and Boswell decided to devote sufficient time toward writing an adequate biography. He also decided to publish his journal of their Hebridean tour as its first installment. Accordingly, he went to London in the spring of 1785 to see his Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides through the press. This revised version of his original journal, coming from the happiest period of Boswell's life and recording 101 days spent with Johnson, probably excels all the other parts of Boswell's journal. The book achieved a great success, but it also provoked the charge of personal fatuity that has attached to Boswell's name since. Critics then as well as now could not understand how Boswell could record his own vanities and weaknesses with the objectivity of an historian.

Disliking the narrow provincialism of Scotland more and more, Boswell determined to transfer to the English bar. He was called to the Inner Temple on Feb. 9, 1786, and moved his family to London (late 1788). Thereafter he had almost no legal practice, and his principal activity became the writing of his Life of Johnson. His wife's death on June 4, 1789, came as a severe blow. His failure as a lawyer and as a political aspirant; his quarrel with the Earl of Lonsdale, which forced him to resign the recordership of Carlisle in 1790; his straitened financial circumstances; and his encumbrance with debts caused by the maintenance and education of his five children - all these furnished a somber backdrop to his labors of writing, revising, and completing the greatest of all biographies.

The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D was published on May 16, 1791, in a two-volume quarto edition of about 1, 750 copies to immediate success and to critical acclaim for the work and derision for its author. Boswell enjoyed his fame, but he still wished for "creditable employment." His last years were prevailingly unhappy, and he became a heavy drinker. Boswell saw the second edition of his Life through the press in July 1793 and was overseeing the third edition when he died in London after a sudden illness on May 19, 1795.

His Personality

Boswell appeared to his contemporaries as an intelligent, cultured, and congenial man, distinguished by the generosity of his spirit. Pride in his family and a desire for advancement were his ruling passions, but of almost equal importance were his social adaptability, good nature, passion for publicity, and compulsion to record all his activities. Boswell's frankness about his habits has led to an exaggerated emphasis on his instability of character, particularly on his drinking and whoring. The Calvinist instruction he had received as a child in the "last things" and the painfully vivid images of hell fixed in his mind when he was 12 years old warred all his life with his natural impulses and produced recurrent attacks of guilt and depression.

Literary Technique

Boswell was a writer of genius, particularly in his finest type of writing - the record of what he had observed. His three main works-the "Journal" section of his Account of Corsica, the Tour to the Hebrides, and the Life of Johnson - were all based on notes or journals written shortly after the events they describe. Long practice, however, enabled Boswell years later to take condensed notes and to expand them into a detailed scene.

The main characteristics of Boswell's works are accuracy, a sense of the dramatic, and an eye for significant details. In his Life Boswell skillfully dramatized many scenes, building up his effects gradually. The structure of the biography, although ostensibly that of year-by-year arrangement, actually achieves unity through its recurrent topics - religion, government, and death - and through the adept playing off of subordinate figures - Edmund Burke, Oliver Goldsmith, and Boswell himself - against Johnson. This latter technique projects Johnson into the spotlight as though he were the main character in a novel, one made up of a series of interconnected dramas in which Boswell has arranged all figures for maximum effect.

Further Reading

The standard scholarly edition of the Life of Johnson is that edited by George Birbeck Hill and revised and enlarged by L. F. Powell, volume 5 of which contains the standard scholarly edition of Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides (6 vols., 1934-1964). Boswell's private papers, rediscovered in the 1920s, were edited by Geoffrey Scott and Frederick A. Pottle, Private Papers of James Boswell from Malahide Castle (18 vols., 1928-1934; index, 1937).

The definitive biography, covering Boswell's early career, is Frederick A. Pottle, James Boswell: The Earlier Years, 1740-1795 (1966), which supersedes W. Keith Leask, Boswell (1897). Other biographical sources include Chauncey Brewster Tinker, Young Boswell (1922), and Dominic Bevan Wyndham Lewis, The Hooded Hawk: or, The Case of Mr. Boswell (1946; republished as The Hooded Hawk: James Boswell 1952). The Yale Editions of the Private Papers of James Boswell, edited by Frederick A. Pottle and others, will constitute a virtual autobiography. To date, eight volumes in this series have been issued: Boswell's London Journal, 1762-1763, edited by Pottle (1951); Boswell in Holland, 1763-1764 edited by Pottle (1952); Boswell on the Grand Tour: Germany and Switzerland, 1764, edited by Pottle (1953); Boswell on the Grand Tour: Italy, Corsica, and France, 1765-1766, edited by Frank Brady and Pottle (1955); Boswell in Search of a Wife, 1766-1769, edited by Brady and Pottle (1956); Boswell for the Defence, 1769-1774, edited by William K. Wimsatt, Jr., and Pottle (1962); Boswell's Journal of a Tour of the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson edited by Pottle (1962); and Boswell: The Ominous Years, edited by Charles Ryskamp and Pottle (1963).

Frederick A. Pottle, The Literary Career of James Boswell, Esq. (1929), remains the standard bibliographical work.

Critical studies of note include Geoffrey Scott, The Making of the Life of Johnson, volume 6 of Private Papers of James Boswell from Malahide Castle, already mentioned; Bertrand H. Bronson, "Boswell's Boswell, " in Johnson and Boswell: Three Essays (1945); F. A. Pottle, "The Power of Memory in Boswell and Scott, " in Essays on the Eighteenth Century: Presented to David Nichol Smith (1945); Frederick A. Pottle, "James Boswell, Journalist, " in The Age of Johnson: Essays Presented to Chauncey Brewster Tinker (1949); Moray McLaren, The Highland Jaunt: A Study of James Boswell and Samuel Johnson upon Their Highland and Hebridean Tour of 1773 (1955); Frank Brady, Boswell's Political Career (1965); and Johnson, Boswell, and Their Circle: Essays Presented to Lawrence Fitzroy Powell (1965).

Additional Sources

Finlayson, Iain, The moth and the candle: a life of James Boswell, New York: St. Martin's Press, 1984.

Brady, Frank, James Boswell, the later years, 1769-1795, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1984.

Pottle, Frederick Albert, James Boswell, the earlier years, 1740-1769, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1985.

Daiches, David, James Boswell and his world, New York: Scribner, 1976.

Boswell, James, Boswell, Laird of Auchinleck, 1778-1782, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1977.

Boswell, James (1740-95). Writer. Educated at Edinburgh High School and Edinburgh University, the son of Lord Auchinleck, Boswell owes his significance to Samuel Johnson. Their friendship enabled him to write Life of Johnson (1791) as well as Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides (1785).Boswell's non-Johnsonian literary achievement was his Account of Corsica (1768). Boswell lacked sufficient dedication to be a successful lawyer and his hopes of entering Parliament were never realized.

Boswell, James (1740–1795), Scottish biographer, lawyer, and man of letters. James Boswell is most famous as the author of the Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), perhaps the most celebrated biography in the English language. He was the eldest son of Alexander Boswell, judge and laird of Auchinleck, whose title came from the family estate in Ayrshire, western Scotland. Following his father's advice, Boswell agreed to study law at the universities of Edinburgh and Glasgow, but, lacking enthusiasm, in 1762 he traveled to London seeking a commission in the Foot Guards and, much to his father's disapproval, a more active and glamorous life in the higher echelons of the British army. Boswell's year living in London is recorded in his London Journal 1762–1763, a text that details Boswell's daily rounds of socializing, visiting prostitutes, going to the theater, and mixing with London's literary elite, including Samuel Johnson, to whom he was introduced on 16 May 1763 at Thomas Davies' book shop, and with whom he held a lifelong correspondence and friendship. Moving to Holland in 1763 to continue his study of law at Utrecht, Boswell was rewarded for following his father's career advice with a grand tour through Germany, France, and Italy. Visiting Corsica in 1765, and befriending General Paoli, who was fighting for its independence, Boswell turned his experience of traveling to this island into a successful travel book, An Account of Corsica (1768), which established his literary reputation in London. In 1769 he married Margaret Montgomerie and, dividing his time between his Edinburgh home and Johnson's house in London, he began to collect material for an intended biography of Johnson, persuading his subject to take a tour of Scotland and the Hebrides with him in 1773, a journey he turned into a travel narrative, Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, which was published in 1785. Elected to Johnson's exclusive Literary Club in 1773, Boswell also contributed essays as "The Hypochondriak" to The London Magazine from 1777 to 1783 on subjects ranging from drinking to memory, but perhaps most famously on diary writing, which was a constant and, indeed, obsessive passion of his, causing him to write that "a man should not live more than he can record, as a farmer should not have a larger crop than he can gather in" ("On Diaries," 1783). Following the death of his father in 1782, Boswell spent more time at the family estate in Ayrshire, meeting Johnson for the last time in London in 1784.

After Johnson's death in 1784, Boswell began to work exclusively on the Life, assisted by his friend the Shakespearean scholar Edmond Malone in collecting and editing Johnson's voluminous papers and correspondence. The Life was finally published in 1791, eclipsing all other biographies of Johnson with its scope and liveliness, and silencing those who thought Boswell was not serious enough to produce a memoir of one of the period's most revered literary figures. In his final years, and despite recurring bouts of ill health, Boswell continued to practice law and to travel the country as "the Great Biographer." Boswell died in London in 1795 and his body was interred in the family vault at Auchinleck. His papers remained in the attic at the estate and were unread until rediscovered by Lord Talbot in 1905. Once uncovered, his papers were shipped to Talbot's estate in Ireland and, after many years of scholarly bidding, were finally collated by Yale University Library in 1949. Yale has since published Boswell's correspondence and journals, and the frankness of these texts reveals intimate details about his own eventful life and documents fascinating details about literary society in eighteenth-century Britain.

Bibliography

Primary Sources

Boswell, James. The Journal of a Tour to Corsica and Memoirs of Pascal Paoli. Edited by S. C. Roberts. Cambridge, U.K., 1923. Reprint 1966.

——. Life of Samuel Johnson: Together with Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides and Johnson's Diary of a Journey into North Wales. Edited by George Birkbeck Hill. 6 vols. Rev. enl. ed. Oxford, 1934–1964.

——. Samuel Johnson and James Boswell: A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland and The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides. Edited by Peter Levi. London, 1984.

——. The Yale Edition of Boswell's Correspondence and Journals. Edited by Frederick A. Pottle et al. 15 vols. London, 1950–1993.

Secondary Sources

Brown, Anthony E. Boswellian Studies: A Bibliography. 3rd rev. ed. Edinburgh, 1991.

Hyde, Mary. The Impossible Friendship: Boswell and Mrs. Thrale. Cambridge, Mass., and London, 1972.

Pottle, Frederick A. Pride and Negligence: The History of the Boswell Papers. London, 1982.

Rogers, Pat. Johnson and Boswell: The Transit of Caledonia. Oxford and New York, 1995.

Sisman, Adam. Boswell's Presumptuous Task: Writing the Life of Dr. Johnson. London and New York, 2000.

—ALISON STENTON

Quotes:

"We cannot tell the precise moment when friendship is formed. As in filling a vessel drop by drop, there is at last a drop which makes it run over. So in a series of kindness there is, at last, one which makes the heart run over."

"I find I journalize too tediously. Let me try to abbreviate."

"There is nothing worth the wear of winning, but laughter and the love of friends."

"For my own part I think no innocent species of wit or pleasantry should be suppressed: and that a good pun may be admitted among the smaller excellencies of lively conversation."

"I have discovered that we may be in some degree whatever character we choose. Besides, practice forms a man to anything."

This article is about XVIII century writer. For other persons of the same name, see James Boswell (disambiguation).

James Boswell
Born	October 29, 1740(1740-10-29) Edinburgh, Scotland
Died	May 19, 1795 (aged 54) London, England
Occupation	Lawyer, Diarist, Author

James Boswell, 9th Laird of Auchinleck (October 29, 1740 – May 19, 1795) was a lawyer, diarist, and author born in Edinburgh, Scotland; he is best known for his biography of Samuel Johnson. His name has passed into the English language as a term (Boswell, Boswellian, Boswellism) for a constant companion and observer.

Boswell is also known for the detailed and frank journals that he wrote for long periods of his life, which remained undiscovered until the 1920s. These included voluminous notes on the grand tour of Europe that he took as a young man and, subsequently, of his tour of Scotland with Johnson. His journals also record meetings and conversations with eminent individuals belonging to The Club, including Lord Monboddo, David Garrick, Edmund Burke, Joshua Reynolds and Oliver Goldsmith. His written works focus chiefly on others, but he was admitted as a good companion and accomplished conversationalist in his own right.

Contents 1 Early life 2 European travels 3 Mature life 4 Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson 5 Slavery 6 Discovery of papers 7 References 8 Works 9 Published journals 10 External links

Early life

Boswell was born near St Giles Cathedral in Edinburgh on 29 October 1740. He was the eldest son of a judge, Alexander Boswell, 8th Laird of Auchinleck and his wife Euphemia Erskine; he inherited his father’s estate Auchinleck in Ayrshire. Boswell's mother was a strict Calvinist, and he felt that his father was cold to him. As a child, he was delicate and suffered from some type of nervous ailment which appeared to be inherent^[1] and would afflict him sporadically all through his life. At the age of five, he was sent to James Mundell's academy, an advanced institution by the standards of the time, where he was instructed in English, Latin, writing and arithmetic. Boswell was unhappy there, and his sickliness began to manifest itself in the physical indicants associated with night fears and extreme shyness.

In view of this, the now-eight-year-old was removed from the academy and educated by a string of private tutors who included John Dunn and a Mr Fergusson. The former had rather more success than his successor: he versed his charge in the joys of literature (not least of all the Spectator essays) and opened his eyes to the pleasances of religion. Dunn was also present during, if not directly involved in, Boswell's serious affliction of 1752, when he was rusticated to the hamlet of Moffat in northern Dumfriesshire. This afforded him his first experience of genuine society, and his recovery was rapid and complete. It may, however, have inculcated the notion that travel and entertainment were his best sedatives.

At thirteen, Boswell was enrolled into the arts course at the University of Edinburgh, studying there from 1753 to 1758. Midway through his studies, he suffered a serious depression and nervous illness, but, when he recovered, he had thrown off all signs of delicacy and attained robust health. Boswell had swarthy skin, black hair and dark eyes; he was of average height, and he tended to plumpness. His appearance was alert and masculine, and he had an ingratiating sense of good humour.

Upon turning nineteen, he was sent to continue his studies at the University of Glasgow, where he was taught by Adam Smith. While at Glasgow, Boswell decided to convert to Catholicism and become a monk. Upon learning of this, his father ordered him home. Instead of obeying, though, Boswell ran away to London, where he spent three months, living the life of a libertine, before he was taken back to Scotland by his father. Upon returning, he was re-enrolled at Edinburgh University and forced by his father to sign away most of his inheritance in return for an allowance of £100 a year.

On July 30, 1762, Boswell took his oral law exam, which he passed with some skill. Upon this success, Lord Auchinleck decided to raise his son's allowance to £200 a year and allowed him to return to London. It was during his second spell there that Boswell wrote his London Journal and, on May 16, 1763, met Johnson for the first time. The pair became friends almost immediately. Johnson eventually nicknamed him "Bozzy".

The first conversation between Johnson and Boswell is quoted in The Life of Samuel Johnson as follows:

[Boswell:] "Mr. Johnson, I do indeed come from Scotland, but I cannot help it."

:[Johnson:] "That, Sir, I find, is what a very great many of your countrymen cannot help."^[2]

It is widely believed that Johnson despised the Scots; however, on being specifically asked the question, he admitted that this prejudice was without basis.

European travels

It was around three months after this first encounter with Johnson that Boswell departed for Europe with the initial goal of continuing his law studies at Utrecht University. He spent a year there and although desperately unhappy the first few months, eventually quite enjoyed his time in Utrecht. He befriended and fell in love with Belle van Zuiylen, a vivacious young Dutchwoman of unorthodox opinions, his social and intellectual superior. Boswell admired the young widow Geelvinck who refused to marry him. After this, Boswell spent most of the next two years travelling around the continent. During this time he met Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau and made a pilgrimage to Rome. Boswell also travelled to Corsica to meet one of his heroes, the independence leader Pasquale Paoli. His well observed diaries of this time have been compiled into two books Boswell in Holland and Boswell and the Grand Tour.

Mature life

Boswell returned to London in February 1766 accompanied by Rousseau's mistress, with whom he may have had a brief affair on the journey home.^[3] After spending a few weeks in the capital, he returned to Scotland to take his final law exam. He passed the exam and became an advocate. He practised for over a decade, during which time he spent no more than a month every year with Johnson. Nevertheless, he returned to London annually to mingle with Johnson and the rest of the London literary crowd, and to escape his mundane existence in Scotland. He found enjoyment in playing the intellectual rhyming game crambo with his peers.

Some of his journal entries and letters from this period describe his amatory exploits. Thus, in 1767, in a letter to W.J.Temple, he wrote, "I got myself quite intoxicated, went to a Bawdy-house and past a whole night in the arms of a Whore. She indeed was a fine strong spirited Girl, a Whore worthy of Boswell if Boswell must have a whore"^[4] A few years earlier, he wrote that during a night with an actress named Louisa "five times was I fairly lost in supreme rapture. Louisa was madly fond of me; she declared I was a prodigy and asked me if this was not extraordinary for human nature."^[5] Though he sometimes used a condom for protection^[6], he contracted venereal disease at least seventeen times^[7]

Boswell married his cousin, Margaret Montgomerie, in November 1769. She remained faithful to Boswell, despite his frequent liaisons with prostitutes, until her death of tuberculosis in 1789. After his infidelities he would deliver tearful apologies to her and beg her forgiveness, before again promising her, and himself, that he would reform. James and Margaret had four sons and three daughters. Two sons died in infancy; the other two were Alexander (1775-1822) and James (1778-1822). Their daughters were Veronica (1773-1795), Euphemia (1774-ca. 1834) and Elizabeth (1780-1814). Boswell also had at least two illegitimate children, Charles (1762-1764) and Sally (1767-1768?).

Despite his relative literary success with accounts of his European travels, Boswell was an unsuccessful advocate. By the late 1770s he descended further and further into alcoholism and gambling addiction. Throughout his life, from childhood until death, he was beset by severe swings of mood. His depressions frequently encouraged, and were exacerbated by, his various vices. His happier periods usually saw him relatively vice-free. His character mixed a superficial Enlightenment sensibility for reason and taste with a genuine and somewhat Romantic love of the sublime and a propensity for occasionally puerile whimsy. The latter, along with his tendency for drink and other vices, caused many contemporaries and later observers to regard him as being too lightweight to be an equal in the literary crowd that he wanted to be a part of. However, his humour and innocent good nature won him many lifelong friends.

Boswell was a frequent guest of Lord Monboddo at Monboddo House, a setting where he gathered significant observations for his writings by association with Samuel Johnson, Robert Burns, Lord Kames, Lord Monboddo and other luminaries.

After Johnson's death in 1784, Boswell moved to London to try his luck at the English Bar, which proved even more unsuccessful than his career in Scotland. He also offered to stand for Parliament but failed to get the necessary support, and he spent the final years of his life writing his Life of Johnson. During this time his health began to fail due to venereal disease and his years of drinking. Boswell died in London in 1795.

Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson

A literary party at Sir Joshua Reynolds - 1781. The painting shows the friends of Reynolds including Boswell at left - use cursor to identify others.

When the Life of Johnson was published in 1791 it at once commanded the admiration that Boswell had sought for so long, and it has suffered no diminution since. Its style was revolutionary - unlike other biographies of that era it directly incorporated conversations that Boswell had noted down at the time for his journals. He also included far more personal and human details than contemporary readers were accustomed to. Instead of writing a respectful and dry record of Johnson's public life, in the style of the time, he painted a vivid portrait of the complete man. It is still often said to be the greatest biography yet written, and the longevity of Dr Johnson's fame perhaps owes much to the work.

The question has often been asked of how a man such as Boswell could have produced so remarkable a work as the Life of Johnson. Among those who attempted an answer were Macaulay and Carlyle: the former arguing that Boswell's uninhibited folly and triviality were his greatest qualifications; the latter replying that beneath such traits were a mind to discern excellence and a heart to appreciate it, aided by the power of accurate observation and considerable dramatic ability. (Macaulay's venomous condemnation of Boswell's personality may have had a political foundation: Boswell was a Tory, and as such a target for Whig historian Macaulay's attacks. In addition, Macaulay's grandfather was the victim of one of Johnson's sharpest rebukes: "Sir, are you so grossly ignorant of human nature, as not to know that a man may be very sincere in good principles, without having good practice?").^[8]

Slavery

Boswell was present at the meeting of the Committee for the Abolition of the Slave Trade in May 1787 set up to persuade William Wilberforce to lead the abolition movement in Parliament. However, the abolitionist Thomas Clarkson records that by 1788 Boswell "after having supported the cause... became inimical to it."

Boswell's most prominent display of support for the slavery movement was his 1791 poem 'No Abolition of Slavery; or the Universal Empire of Love,' which lampooned Clarkson, Wilberforce and Pitt. The poem also supports the common suggestion of the pro-slavery movement, that the slaves actually enjoyed their lot: "The cheerful gang! - the negroes see / Perform the task of industry."

Discovery of papers

In the 1920s a great part of Boswell's private papers, including intimate journals for much of his life, were discovered at Malahide Castle, north of Dublin. These provide a hugely revealing insight into the life and thoughts of the man. They were sold to the American collector Ralph H. Isham and have since passed to Yale University, which has published general and scholarly editions of his journals and correspondence. A second cache was discovered soon after and also purchased by Isham. A substantially longer edition of A Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides was published in 1936 based on his original manuscript. His London Journal 1762-63, the first of the Yale journal publications, appeared in 1950. The last, The Great Biographer, 1789-1795, was published in 1989.

References

1. ^ It is true that two uncles and a younger brother had been driven to the brink of madness.
2. ^ James Boswell The Life of Samuel Johnson, [1992] Everyman ed, p247
3. ^ Correspondence of James Boswell and William Johnson Temple, Edinburgh 1997, page 140 footnote 4[1]
4. ^ Boswell Correspondence, letter of June 26, 1767
5. ^ Tis Nature's Fault: Unauthorized Sexuality during the Enlightenment by R.P.Macubbin, page 64
6. ^ Privacy: concealing the eithteenth-century self by P Spacks page 141
7. ^ Glimpses of Glory by R. L Greaves page 381
8. ^ A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature by John W. Cousin - Full Text Free Book (Part 2/13)

Works

• Dorando, a Spanish Tale (1767, anonymously)
• Account of Corsica (1768)
• The Hypochondriack (1777-1783, a monthly series in the London Magazine)
• A Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides (1785)
• The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791, reprinted in Everyman's Library)
• No Abolition of Slavery (1791) (poem)
• The Life of Samuel Johnson, Facsimile Reprint of First Issue of the First Edition, bound with The Principal Corrections and Additions to the First Edition, 2 volumes (ISBN 978-4-901481-69-4) www.aplink.co.jp/synapse/4-901481-69-X.htm

Published journals

• Boswell's London Journal, 1762-1763
• Boswell in Holland, 1763-1764, including his correspondence with Belle de Zuylen (ZeÌlide)
• Boswell on the Grand Tour: Germany and Switzerland, 1764
• Boswell on the Grand Tour: Italy, Corsica, and France, 1765-1766
• Boswell in Search of a Wife, 1766-1769
• Boswell for the Defence, 1769-1774
• Boswell: the Ominous Years, 1774-1776
• Boswell in Extremes, 1776-1778
• Boswell: Laird of Auchinleck 1778-1782
• Boswell, the Applause of the Jury, 1782-1785
• Boswell, the English Experiment, 1785-1789
• Boswell: The Great Biographer, 1789-1795

• Purdie, D.W. (2002). The Maladies of James Boswell, Advocate. Journal of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh 32, 197-202.
• Clarkson, Thomas (1808). The History of the Rise, Progress, and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave-Trade by the British Parliament.
• Boswell, James (1791). No Abolition of Slavery; or the Universal Empire of Love

• A Short Biographical Dictionary of English [2]

External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: James Boswell

• Works by James Boswell at Project Gutenberg
• Works by James Boswell at Internet Archive
• James Boswell - a Guide
• James Boswell's "An Account of Corsica" - online book
• Young Boswell, by Chauncey Brewster Tinker, Boston: Atlantic monthly press, 1922, University of Michigan Library (Digital Collection)
• Essay on Johnson, Boswell and the Abolition of Slavery
• Online catalogue (in progress) of James Boswell's library at LibraryThing

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• This article incorporates public domain text from: Cousin, John William (1910). A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature. London, J. M. Dent & sons; New York, E. P. Dutton.

Persondata
NAME	Boswell, James
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	9th Laird of Auchinleck
SHORT DESCRIPTION	Scottish Lawyer, Diarist, Author
DATE OF BIRTH	October 29, 1740
PLACE OF BIRTH	Edinburgh, Scotland
DATE OF DEATH	May 19, 1795
PLACE OF DEATH	London, England

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