James Boswell

James Boswell (1740-1795). Portrait by George Willison (1741-1797), 1765. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

James Boswell
Born	October 29 1740(1740-Template:MONTHNUMBER-29) (N.S.) Edinburgh, Scotland
Died	May 19 1795(1795-Template:MONTHNUMBER-19) (aged 54) London, England
Occupation	Lawyer, diarist, biographer
Language	English
Nationality	Scottish
Citizenship	Great Britain
Alma mater	Universities of Edinburgh, Glasgow, Utrecht
Notable work(s)	Life of Samuel Johnson
Spouse(s)	Margaret Montgomerie (1769-1789)
Children	Sir Alexander Boswell, 1st Baronet; James Boswell (1778–1822); Veronica Boswell; Euphemia Boswell; Elizabeth Boswell; Charles Boswell (extramarital);Sally (extramarital)

James Boswell, 9th Laird of Auchinleck ( /ˈbɒzwɛl,_ʔwəl/; 29 October 1740 (N.S.) – 19 May 1795), was a Scottish biographer, diarist, and lawyer, best known for his biography of his friend Samuel Johnson, often said to be the greatest biography written in the English language.

Life

Overview

Boswell, son of Alexander Boswell of Auchinleck, Ayrshire, a judge of the Supreme Courts of Scotland, was educated at the High School and University of Edinburgh]], and practiced as an advocate. He traveled much on the Continent and visited Corsica, where he became acquainted with Corsican patriot General Paoli. Fortunately for posterity he was in 1763 introduced to Dr. Johnson, and formed an acquaintance with him which soon ripened into friendship, and had as its ultimate fruit the immortal Life. He was also the author of several works of more or less interest, including an Account of Corsica (1768), and Journal of Tour to the Hebrides (in the company of Johnson) (1786). Vain and foolish in an exceptional degree, and by no means free from more serious faults, Boswell has yet produced the greatest biography in the language. The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. appeared in 1791, and at once commanded an admiration which has suffered no diminution since. But by this time a cloud had fallen upon the author. He had lost his excellent wife, his health had given way, the intemperance to which he had always been subject had mastered him, and he died 4 years after the appearance of his great work. Boswell was called to the English as well as to the Scottish Bar, but his various foibles prevented his reaching any great success, and he had also vainly endeavored to enter on a political career. The question has often been raised how a man with the characteristics of Boswell could have produced so unique a work, and has been discussed at length by Macaulay and by Carlyle, the former paradoxically arguing that his supreme folly and meanness themselves formed his greatest qualifications; the latter, with far deeper insight, that beneath these there lay the possession of an eye to discern excellence and a heart to appreciate it, intense powers of accurate observation and a considerable dramatic faculty.

Family, youth, education

Boswell was born at Edinburgh on 29 October 1740. His grandfather was in practice at the Scottish bar, and his father, Alexander Boswell of Auchinleck, was also a noted advocate, who, on his elevation to the supreme court in 1754, took the name of his Ayrshire property as Lord Auchinleck. A Thomas Boswell (said upon doubtful evidence to have been a minstrel in the household of James IV.) was killed at Flodden, and since 1513 the family had greatly improved its position in the world by intermarriage with the Scots nobility.

In contradiction to his father, a rigid Presbyterian Whig, James was “a fine boy, wore a white cockade, and prayed for King James until his uncle Cochrane gave him a shilling to pray for King George, which he accordingly did” (“Whigs of all ages are made in the same way” was Johnson's comment). He met some English boys, and acquired a “tincture of polite letters” at the high school in Edinburgh. Like Robert Louis Stevenson, he early frequented society such as that of the actors at the Edinburgh theatre, sternly disapproved of by his father.

At the university, where he was constrained for a season to study civil law, he met William Johnson Temple, his future friend and correspondent. The letters of Boswell to his “Atticus” were first published by Bentley in 1857. One winter he spent at Glasgow, where he sat under Adam Smith, who was then lecturing on moral philosophy and rhetoric.

Boswell was initiated into Freemasonry in Lodge Canongate Kilwinning on 14 August 1759. He subsequently became Master of that Lodge in 1773 and in that year was Senior Grand Warden of the Grand Lodge of Scotland. From 1776 - 1777 he was the Depute Grand Master of that Grand Lodge.

In 1760 Boswll was brought into contact with “the elegance, the refinement and the liberality” of London society, for which he had long sighed. The young earl of Eglintoun took him to Newmarket and introduced him into the society of “the great, the gay and the ingenious.” He wrote a poem called “The Cub at Newmarket,” published by Dodsley in 1762, and had visions of entering the Guards.

Reclaimed with some difficulty by his father from his rakish companions in the metropolis, he contrived to alleviate the irksomeness of law study in Edinburgh by forcing his acquaintance upon the celebrities then assembled in the northern capital, among them Kames, Blair, Robertson, Hume, and Sir David Dalrymple (Lord Hailes), of whose sayings on the Northern Circuit he kept a brief journal. He became intimate with an actor, David Ross, who was now giving private entertainments in Edinburgh, and who afterwards (December 1767) obtained permission to open the first theater there, on which occasion Boswell contributed a prologue.

Boswell's chief associate at the time was Andrew Erskine, captain in the 71st regiment, and son of the 5th Earl of Kellie, with whom he carried on a correspondence from August 1761 to November 1762. The young men did their best to be vivacious in prose and verse, and published their letters in 1763. Erskine had edited in 1760 the 1st volume of A Collection of Original Poems by the Rev. Mr. Blacklock and other Scotch gentlemen, published by Donaldson, an Edinburgh bookseller; a 2nd, partly edited by Boswell, followed in February 1762, but the reception was not such as to encourage an intended 3rd. From the 28 poems contributed by Boswell we learn that he was the founder of a "jovial society called the Soaping Club," from the proverbial phrase, "Let every man soap his own beard." Boswell calls himself king of the soapers, boasts of his volatility, his comic singing, and conversational charms,and ends by declaring that "there is no better fellow alive." In December 1761 he published an anonymous Ode to Tragedy, gravely dedicated to himself as to one we could "relish the productions of a serious muse" in spite of his apparent volatility.

In the spring of 1763 Boswell came to an agreement with his father. He consented to give up his pursuit of a guidon in the Guards and 3s.6p a day on condition that his father would allow him to study civil law on the continent. He set out in April 1763 by “the best road in Scotland” with a servant, on horseback like himself, in “a cocked hat, a brown wig, brown coat made in the court fashion, red vest, corduroy small clothes and long military boots.”

London and Johnson

On Monday, 16 May 1763, in the back shop of Tom Davies the bookseller, No. 8 Russell Street, Covent Garden, James Boswell met Samuel Johnson, the great man of his dreams, and was severely buffeted by him:

[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."

8 days later, on Tuesday, 24 May, Boswell boldly called on “Dictionary Johnson” at his chambers on the ground floor of No. 1 Inner Temple Lane. On this occasion Johnson pressed him to stay; on 13 June he said, “Come to me as often as you can”; on the 25th of June Boswell gave the great man a little sketch of his own life, and Johnson exclaimed with warmth, “Give me your hand; I have taken a liking to you.” Boswell experienced a variety of sensations, among which exultation was predominant.

Someone asked, “Who is this Scotch cur at Johnson's heels?” “He is not a cur,” replied Goldsmith, “he is only a bur. Tom Davies flung him at Johnson in sport, and he has the faculty of sticking.” Johnson was 54 at this time and Boswell 23. After June 1763 they met on something like 270 subsequent days. These meetings formed the memorable part of Boswell's life, and they are told inimitably in his famous biography of his friend.

The friendship, consecrated by the most delightful of biographies, , was not so ill-assorted as has been inconsiderately maintained. Boswell's freshness at the table of conversation gave a new zest to every maxim that Johnson enunciated, while Boswell developed a perfect genius for interpreting the kind of worldly philosophy at which Johnson was so unapproachable. Both men welcomed an excuse for avoiding the task-work of life. Johnson's favourite indulgence was to talk; Boswell's great idea of success to elicit memorable conversation.

Boswell is almost equally admirable as a reporter and as an interviewer, as a collector and as a researcher. He prepared meetings for Johnson, he prepared topics for him, he drew him out on questions of the day, he secured a copy of his famous letter to Lord Chesterfield, he obtained an almost verbatim report of Johnson's interview with the king, he frequented the tea-table of Miss Williams, he attended the testy old scholar on lengthy peregrinations in the Highlands and in the midlands. “Sir,” said Johnson to his follower, “you appear to have only two subjects, yourself and me, and I am sick of both.”

Yet thorough as the scheme was from the outset, and admirable as was the devotedness of the biographer, Boswell was far too volatile a man to confine himself to a single ambition in life that was not consistent with a large amount of present fame and notoriety. He would have liked to Boswellize the popular idol Wilkes, or Chatham, or Voltaire, or even the great Frederick himself.

Corsica

As it was, during his continental tour Boswell managed in the autumn of 1765 to get on terms with Pasquale di Paoli, the leader of the Corsican insurgents in their unwise struggle against Genoa. After a few weeks in Corsica he returned to London in February 1766, accompanied by Rousseau's mistress, with whom he had a brief affair on the journey home, and was received by Johnson with the utmost cordiality.

In accordance with the family compact referred to he was now admitted advocate at Edinburgh, and signalized his return to the law by an enthusiastic pamphlet entitled The Essence of the Douglas Cause (November 1767), in which he vigorously repelled the charge of imposture from the youthful claimant. In the same year he issued a little book called Dorando, containing a history of the Douglas cause in the guise of a Spanish tale, and bringing the story to a conclusion by the triumph of Archibald Douglas in the law courts. Editors who published extracts while the case was still sub judice were censured severely by the court of session; but though his identity was notorious the author himself escaped censure.

Some of his journal entries and letters from this period describe his amatory exploits. Thus, in 1767, in a letter to William Johnson 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." 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." Though he sometimes used a condom for protection, he contracted venereal disease at least 17.

In the spring of 1768 Boswell published through the Foulis brothers of Glasgow his Account of Corsica, Journal of a Tour to that Island, and Memoirs of Pascal Paoli. The liveliness of personal impression which he managed to communicate to all his books gained for this a deserved success, and the Tour was promptly translated into French, German, Italian and Dutch. Walpole, and others, jeered, but Boswell was talked about everywhere, as Paoli Boswell or Paoli's Englishman, and to aid the mob in the task of identifying him at the Shakespeare jubilee of 1769 he took the trouble to insert a placard in his hat bearing the legend “Corsica Boswell.” The amazing costume of “a Corsican chief” which he wore on this occasion was described at length in the magazines.

On 25 November 1769, after a short tour in Ireland undertaken to empty his head of Corsica (Johnson's emphatic direction), Boswell married his cousin Margaret Montgomery at Lainshaw in Ayrshire. She remained faithful to Boswell, despite his frequent liaisons with prostitutes, until her death from 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 4 sons and 3 daughters. 2 sons died in infancy; the others were Sir Alexander Boswell, 1st Baronet (1775–1822) and James Boswell (1778–1822). Their daughters were Veronica (1773–1795), Euphemia (1774–1834?) and Elizabeth, known as 'Betsy', (1780–1814). Boswell also had at least 2 extramarital children, Charles (1762–1764) and Sally (1767–1768?).

Hebrides tour

For some years henceforth Boswell's visits to London were brief, but on 30 April 1773 he was present at his admission to the Literary Club, for which honour he had been proposed by Johnson himself.

In the autumn of 1773 in the course of his tour to the Hebrides Johnson visited the Boswells in Ayrshire. Neither Boswell's father nor his wife shared his enthusiasm for the lexicographer. Lord Auchinleck remarked that Jamie was “gane clean gyte . . . And whose tail do ye think he has pinned himself to now, man? A dominie, an auld dominie, that keepit a schule and ca'd it an academy!” Housewives less prim than Mrs Boswell might have objected to Johnson's habit of turning lighted candles upside down when in the parlour to make them burn better. She called the great man a bear.

Boswell's Journal of a Tour in the Hebrides was written for the most part during the journey, but was not published until the spring of 1786. The diary of Pepys was not then known to the public, and Boswell's indiscretions as to the emotions aroused in him by the neat ladies' maids at Inveraray, and the extremity of drunkenness which he exhibited at Corrichatachin, created a literary sensation and sent the Tour through 3 editions in a year. In the meantime, though, his financial and other difficulties at home were great; he made hardly more than £100 a year by his profession, and his relations with his father were chronically strained.

In 1775 he began to keep terms at the Inner Temple and managed to see a good deal of Johnson, between whom and John Wilkes he succeeded in bringing about a meeting at the famous dinner at Dilly's on 15 May 1776. On 30 August 1782 his father died, leaving him an estate worth £1600 a year.

Last years

On 30 June 1784, Boswell met Johnson for the last time at a dinner at Sir Joshua Reynolds's. He accompanied him back in the coach from Leicester Square to Bolt Court. “We bade adieu to each other affectionately in the carriage. When he had got down upon the foot pavement he called out 'Fare you well'; and without looking back, sprung away with a kind of pathetic briskness, if I may use that expression, which seemed to indicate a struggle to conceal uneasiness, and impressed me with a foreboding of our long, long separation.” Johnson died that year, and 2 years later the Boswells moved to London.

In 1789 Mrs. Boswell died, leaving 5 children. She had been an excellent mother and a good wife, despite the infidelities and drunkenness of her husband, and from her death Boswell relapsed into worse excesses, grievously aggravated by hypochondria. He died of a complication of disorders at his house in Great Poland Street on the 19th of May 1795, and was buried a fortnight later at Auchinleck.

Writing

Up to the eve of his last illness Boswell had been busy upon his magnum opus, The Life of Samuel Johnson, which was in process of crystallization to the last. The 1st edition was published in two quarto volumes in an edition of 1700 copies on 16th May 1791. He was preparing a 3rd edition when he died; this was completed by his friend Edmund Malone, who brought out a 5th edition in 1807. That of James Boswell junior (the editor of Malone's Variorum Shakespeare, 1821) appeared in 1811.

The Life of Johnson was written on a scale practically unknown to biographers before Boswell. It is a full-length with all the blotches and pimples revealed (“I will not make my tiger a cat to please anybody,” wrote “Bozzy”). It may be overmuch an exhibition of oddities, but it is also, be it remembered, a pioneer application of the experimental method to the determination of human character.

Its size and lack of divisions (to divide it into chapters was an original device of Croker's) are a drawback, and have prevented Boswell's Life from that assured triumph abroad which has fallen to the lot of various English classics. But wherever English is spoken, it has become a veritable sacred book and has pervaded English life and thought in the same way, that the Bible, Shakespeare and Bunyan have done. Boswell has successfully (to use his own phrase) “Johnsonized” Britain, but has not yet Johnsonized the planet.

The model originally proposed to himself by Boswell was Mason's Life of Gray, but he far surpassed that, or indeed any other, model. The fashion that Boswell adopted of giving the conversations not in the neutral tints of oratio obliqua but in full oratio recta was a stroke of genius. But he is far from being the mere mechanical transmitter of good things. He is a dramatic and descriptive artist of the highest order. The extraordinary vitality of his figures postulates a certain admixture of fiction, and it is certain that Boswell exaggerates the sympathy expressed in word or deed by Johnson for some of his own tenderer foibles. But, on the whole, the best judges are of opinion that Boswell's accuracy is exceptional, as it is undoubtedly seconded by a power of observation of a singular retentiveness and intensity.

The difficulty of dramatic description can only be realized, as Jowett well pointed out, by those who have attempted it, and it is not until we compare Boswell's reports with those of less skilful hearers that we can appreciate the skill with which the essence of a conversation is extracted, and the whole scene indicated by a few telling touches. The result is that Johnson, (not, it is true, in the early days of his poverty, total idleness and the pride of literature, but in the fulness of fame and competence of fortune from 1763 to 1784), is better known to us than any other man in history.

The old theory to explain such a marvel (originally propounded by Gray when the Tour in Corsica appeared) that “any fool may write a valuable book by chance” is now regarded as untenable. If fool is a word to describe Boswell (and his folly was at times transcendent) he wrote his great book because and not in despite of the fact that he was. There can be no doubt, in fact, that he was a biographical genius, and that he arranged his opportunities just as he prepared his transitions and introduced those inimitable glosses by which Johnson's motives are explained, his state of mind upon particular occasions indicated, and the general feeling of his company conveyed. This remarkable literary faculty, however, was but a fraction of the total make-up requisite to produce such a masterpiece as the Life.

There is a touch of genius, too, in the naïf and imperturbable good nature and persistency (“Sir, I will not be baited with 'what' and 'why.' 'Why is a cow's tail long?' 'Why is a fox's tail bushy?'”), and even in the abnegation of all personal dignity, with which Boswell pursued his hero. As he himself said of Goldsmith, “He had sagacity enough to cultivate assiduously the acquaintance of Johnson, and his faculties were gradually enlarged.” Character, the vital principle of the individual, is the ignis fatuus of the mechanical biographer. Its attainment may be secured by a variety of means — witness Xenophon, Cellini, Aubrey, Lockhart and Froude — but it has never been attained with such complete intensity as by Boswell in his Life of Johnson. The more we study Boswell, the more we compare him with other biographers, the greater his work appears.

Private papers

Bookmark - Boswell's Boswell (BBC 1998)

Boswell's letters to William Temple were discovered at Boulogne, and published in 1857.

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 popular 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 The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides was published in 1936 based on his original manuscript, edited by L.F. Powell. His London Journal 1762–63, the first of the Yale journal publications, appeared in 1950. The last popular edition, The Great Biographer, 1789–1795, was published in 1989. Publication of the research edition of Boswell's journals and letters, each including never before published material, is ongoing.

These detailed and frank journals include 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.

Since the discovery of these journals Boswell has become recognized as a major literary artist. His openness to every nuance of feeling, his delicacy in capturing fugitive sentiments and revealing gestures, his comic self-regard and (at times) self-contempt. Boswell was willing to express what other authors of the time repressed.

Recognition

In popular culture

• Boswell's surname has passed into the English language as a term (Boswell, Boswellian, Boswellism) for a constant companion and observer, especially one who records those observations in print. In "A Scandal in Bohemia", Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's character Sherlock Holmes affectionately says of Dr. Watson, who narrates the tales, "I am lost without my Boswell."
• The comedy Young Auchinleck (1962) by Scottish playwright Robert McLellan depicts Boswell's various courtships and troubled relations with his father in the period after his return to Scotland in 1766, culminating in his eventual marriage to his cousin Margaret Montgomery (Peggy) in 1769 on the same day as his father's 2nd marriage in a different part of the country. The play was produced at the Edinburgh International Festival in 1962 and adapted for BBC Television in 1965.
• Boswell was played by John Sessions in Boswell & Johnson's Tour of the Western Isles, a 1993 BBC 2 play.
• In February and March 2015, BBC Radio 4 broadcast 3 episodes of Boswell's Lives, writer Jon Canter's comedic take on Boswell meeting later historical figures (Sigmund Freud, Maria Callas and Harold Pinter, respectively) for the purposes of biographing them. Boswell was played by Miles Jupp.
• American novelist Philip Baruth wrote a fictional account of James Boswell's early life in The Brothers Boswell (Soho Press 2009). The novel, which includes scenes that feature Samuel Johnson, is a thriller that focuses on the tense relationship between James and his younger brother John.

Publications

Poetry

• The Cub at Newmarket (1762, published by James Dodsley)
• No Abolition of Slavery (1791) (poem)
• Boswell's Book of Bad Verse (A Verse Self-Portrait) or "Love Poems and Other Verses by James Boswell". Edited with Notes by Jack Werner. London. White Lion, 1974. Template:ISBN.

Novel

• Dorando: A Spanish tale (1767, anonymous)

Non-fiction

• "The Rampager" (1770–1782, a series of 20 essays published sporadically in the Public Advertiser)
• The Hypochondriack (1777–83, a series of 70 essays published monthly in the London Magazine)
  • Boswell's Column. Being his Seventy Contributions to 'The London Magazine' under the pseudonym The Hypochondriack from 1777 to 1783 here First Printed in Book Form in England. Introduction and Notes by Margery Bailey. London. William Kimber, 1951.
• The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D 2 vols. (1791, reprinted in Everyman's Library)
• Boswell, James. Facts and Inventions: Selections from the Journalism of James Boswell. Edited by Paul Tankard. New Haven. Yale University Press, 2014. ISBN 978-0-300-14126-9

Letter and journals

• Letters Between the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and James Boswell, Esq. (1763)
• Account of Corsica, The Journal of a Tour to That Island, and Memoirs of Pascal Paoli (1768)
  • (edited with introduction, by Morchard Bishop). London. Williams & Norgate, 1951.
• The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D (1785)
• Boswell, James. Letters of James Boswell to the Rev. W.J. Temple. Introduction by Thomas Seccombe. London. Sidgwick & Jackson, 1908.

After Boswell's private papers were recovered, and brought together by Ralph Isham, they were acquired by Yale University, where a dedicated office was established to edit and publish his journals and correspondence. The journals have been published in 13 volumes, as follows.

• Boswell's London Journal, 1762–1763, ed. F. A. Pottle (1950)
• Boswell in Holland, 1763–1764, including his correspondence with Belle de Zuylen (Zelide), ed. F.A. Pottle (1952)
• Boswell on the Grand Tour: Germany and Switzerland, 1764, ed. F.A. Pottle (1953)
• Boswell on the Grand Tour: Italy, Corsica, and France, 1765-1766, ed. Frank Brady and F. A. Pottle (1955)
• Boswell in Search of a Wife, 1766-1769, ed. Frank Brady and F. A. Pottle (1957)
• Boswell for the Defence, 1769-1774, ed. W. A. Wimsatt and F. A. Pottle (1960)
• Boswell: the Ominous Years, 1774-1776, ed. Charles Ryskamp and F. A. Pottle (1963)
• Boswell in Extremes, 1776-1778, ed. C. McC. Weis and F. A. Pottle (1970)
• Boswell, Laird of Auchinleck, 1778-1782, ed. J. W. Reed and F. A. Pottle (1977)
• Boswell: The Applause of the Jury, 1782-1785, ed. I. S. Lustig and F. A. Pottle (1981)
• Boswell: The English Experiment, 1785-1789, ed. I. S. Lustig and F. A. Pottle (1986)
• Boswell: The Great Biographer, 1789-1795, ed. Marlies K. Danziger and Frank Brady (1989)

See also

• List of British poets

References

• Finlayson, Iain. The Moth and the Candle. A Life of James Boswell. London. Constable, 1984. ISBN: 0-09-465540-5
• McLaren, Moray: The Highland Jaunt. A Study of James Boswell and Samuel Johnson upon their Highland and Hebridean Tour of 1773. London. Jarrolds,1954.
• Mallory, George. Boswell the Biographer. London. Smith, Elder, 1912.
• Martin, Peter. "A Life of James Boswell". London. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1999.
• Pottle, Frederick A. Boswell and the Girl from Botany Bay. London. Heinemann, 1938.
•  Seccombe, Thomas (1911). "Boswell, James". In Chisholm, Hugh. Encyclopædia Britannica. 4 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 297-299. . Wikisource, Web, Mar. 31, 2020.
• Tinker, Chauncey Brewster. Young Boswell. Chapters on James Boswell the Biographer Based Largely on New Material. Boston. Atlantic Monthly, 1922.
• Uglow, Jenny, "Big Talkers" (review of Leo Damrosch, The Club: Johnson, Boswell, and the Friends Who Shaped an Age, Yale University Press, 473 pp.), The New York Review of Books, vol. LXVI, no. 9 (23 May 2019), pp. 26–28.
• Wyndham Lewis, D.B. The Hooded Hawk or The Case of Mr. Boswell. London. Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1946.

External links

Poems

• James Boswell at the Eighteenth-Century Poetry Archive (4 poems)

Audio / video

• James Boswell public domain audiobooks from LibriVox

Books

• Works by James Boswell at Project Gutenberg
• James Boswell at Amazon.com

About

• James Boswell – a Guide
• Boswell, James (1740-1795) in the Dictionary of National Biography
• Blog on Boswell's London Journal
• James Boswell .info Official website
• 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

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain, the 1911 Edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica.. Original article is at Boswell, James