Boswell: The Great Biographer 1789 - 1795 is the thirteenth and final Journal of James Boswell, the author of the Life of Johnson, acknowledged as being the greatest biography ever written. Boswell has also written the greatest autobiography in his journals which is extraordinary in its scope and variety.

This final journal sees Boswell being acclaimed by his contemporaries as the great biographer of his friend Samuel Johnson. But he was dissatisfied and depressed because his professional ambitions of making a name for himself as a barrister or as a political figure were thwarted. Boswell suffered from constitutional depression and he often sought dissipation in society, alcohol and encounters with prostitutes. His much loved wife, Margaret, had died in early 1789.

This journal is noteworthy for detailing his many moods and his wide range of experiences and social contacts with many notable figures in politics, the law and the arts. Boswell was a bon vivant, loved company and was much appreciated by his company.

If you have never read Boswell before then I recommend that you become acquainted with him as a twenty-two year old in Boswells London Journal. It is a wonderful animated journal in which he first comes to London from his family seat in Scotland and meets the old bear, Johnson.

This final volume of Boswell’s Journal paints a somewhat gloomy picture of Boswell’s declining years in which he sees himself as a failure, his depressions are deep and of long duration. His attempts at alleviating his depression by heavy drinking and his subsequent unseemly behaviour are sad to read.

But most heartening was his success as an author and biographer, the high regard in which his friends held him, the relationship with his brother and especially the touching relationship with his eldest son, James Boswell Jr. who encouraged him in his declining years. This is what he wrote to his father on 18th October 1794 just eight months before his father’s death:

“Am sorry to find you writing about ‘your dull and depressed spirits.’ Pray, sir, do not suffer yourself to be melancholy. Think not on your having missed preferment in London or any of these kind of things, the unreasonableness of which you yourself upon reflection must be sensible of if you consider that your manner of living has never been that of a man of business and that, in short, you have been entirely different in every respect from those who have been (in that line) more successful – they who have obtained places and pensions etc. have not the fame of having been the biographer of Johnson or the conscious exultation of a man of genius. They have not enjoyed your happy and convivial hours. They have not known Johnson, Voltiare, Rousseau, and Garrick, Goldsmith, etc., etc. They have not visited the patriots of Corsica. In short, would you rather than have enjoyed so many advantages have been rich, though dull, plodding lawyer? You cannot expect to be both at the same time. Every situation in life has its advantages and disadvantages.”

What a sensible young man, which his father gratefully acknowledged.

My Recommendation :

Cons:

This volume of Boswell’s Journal paints a somewhat gloomy picture of Boswell’s declining years in which he sees himself as a failure, his depressions are deep and of long duration. But his love of London society and his success and fame as Johnson’s biographer offset this gloomy picture.

Pros:

There is no better chronicler of eighteenth century London society than James Boswell Esq., Laird of Auchinleck. ( )