Boswell for the defence, 1769-1774

by James Boswell

The Journals of James Boswell (6)

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The collection and editing of the papers of James Boswell, the Author of the biographical works on Samuel Johnson, was a very useful action. Few eighteenth century literary men are as well documented as Boswell. The eighteenth century was a period of great changes, and without Boswell it would be considerably harder to gather an impression of the British society that was his home. Just enough of an outsider to be an accurate recorder, his impressions often strike a chord in the modern reader.
This volume covers the period when Boswell established himself in his profession, and got married. While fashionable/literary London moved on, Boswell found himself less interested in it. Boswell took up a case of sheep-stealing and was unsucessful show more in preventing the execution of his client, an evemt that affecterd him deeply.
The reader will have a good time sorting out the nuances of Boswell's life at this time, where he appears at his most likeable.
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James Boswell was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1740 of an old and honored family. As a young man, Boswell was ambitious to have a literary career but reluctantly obeying the wishes of his father, a Scottish Judge, he followed a career in the law. He was admitted to the Scottish bar in 1766. However, his legal practice did not prevent him from show more writing a series of periodical essays, The Hypochondriac (1777-83), and his Journal of a Tour of the Hebrides (1785), was an account of the journey to the outer islands of Scotland undertaken with Samuel Johnson in 1773. In addition, Boswell wrote the impulsively frank Journals, private papers lost to history until they were discovered by modern scholars and issued in a multivolume set. Known during much of his life as Corsican Boswell for his authorship of An Account of Corsica in 1768, his first considerable work, Boswell now bears a name that is synonymous with biographer. The reason rests in the achievement of his Life of Samuel Johnson published in 1791, seven years after the death of Johnson. Boswell recorded in his diary the anxiety of the long-awaited encounter with Johnson, on May 16, 1763, in the back parlor of a London bookstore, and upon their first meeting he began collecting Johnson's conversations and opinions. Johnson was a daunting subject for a biographer, in part because of his extraordinary, outsized presence and, in part because Johnson himself was a pioneer in the art of literary biography. Boswell met the challenge by taking an anecdotal, year-by-year approach to the wealth of biographical material he gathered. show less

James Boswell has a Legacy Library. Legacy libraries are the personal libraries of famous readers, entered by LibraryThing members from the Legacy Libraries group.

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de Harak, Rudolph (Cover designer)

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Common Knowledge

Original publication date
1960
People/Characters
Mary Bryant; James Boswell

Classifications

Genres
Biography & Memoir, Fiction and Literature
DDC/MDS
828.6Literature & rhetoricEnglish & Old English literaturesEnglish miscellaneous writingsEnglish miscellaneous writings 1745-1799
LCC
PR3325 .A885Language and LiteratureEnglishEnglish Literature17th and 18th centuries (1640-1770)
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Statistics

Members
109
Popularity
298,547
Reviews
1
Rating
½ (4.56)
Languages
English
Media
Paper
ISBNs
3
ASINs
16