James Boswell

In Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson, one of the towering figures of English literature is revealed with unparalleled immediacy and originality, in a biography to which we owe much of our knowledge of the man himself. Through a series of richly detailed anecdotes, Johnson emerges as a sociable figure, vigorously engaging and fencing with great contemporaries such as Garrick, Goldsmith, Burney and Burke, and of course with Boswell himself. Yet anxieties...

“The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D.” is a travel journal by Scotsman James Boswell first published in 1785. In 1773, Boswell enticed his English friend Samuel Johnson to accompany him on a tour through the highlands and western islands of Scotland. Johnson was then in his mid-sixties and well known for his literary works and his Dictionary. The two travellers set out from Edinburgh and skirted the eastern and northeastern...

In 1773, an unlikely pair-a dominant figure of English literature and a young lawyer-set out on horseback to follow roads and cattle-trails across the Highlands to the Western Islands of Scotland. Their conversation and accounts are filled with curious detail, flashing wit and fascinating encounters with the high and low of the country.

Even if James Boswell hadn't written the The Life of Johnson, he would be famous for this memoir of eighteenth-century London life. Boswell arrived in the great metropolis from his native Edinburgh in 1762, and he kept a daily journal of his nine-month sojourn. Bawdy, witty, and brimming with fascinating details, the accounts range from his illicit encounters with prostitutes to his momentous meeting with Samuel Johnson. Boswell's London diary disappeared...