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Biography of the English writer Samuel Johnson
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- He is best known for his biography of the English writer Samuel Johnson, Life of Samuel Johnson, which is commonly said to be the greatest biography written in the English language. A great mass of Boswell's diaries, letters, and private papers were recovered from the 1920s to the 1950s, and their publication by Yale University has transformed his reputation.
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He is best known for his biography of the English writer Samuel Johnson, Life of Samuel Johnson, which is commonly said to be the greatest biography written in the English language. [2][3] A great mass of Boswell's diaries, letters, and private papers were recovered from the 1920s to the 1950s, and their publication by Yale University has transf...
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James Boswell (born October 18 [October 29, New Style], 1740, Edinburgh, Scotland—died May 19, 1795, London, England) was a friend and biographer of Samuel Johnson (Life of Johnson, 2 vol., 1791). The 20th-century publication of his journals proved him to be also one of the world’s greatest diarists.
Boswell’s father, Alexander Boswell, advocate and laird of Auchinleck in Ayrshire from 1749, was raised to the bench with the judicial title of Lord Auchinleck in 1754. The Boswells were an old and well-connected family, and James was subjected to the strong pressure of an ambitious family.
Boswell hated the select day school to which he was sent at age 5, and from 8 to 13 he was taught at home by tutors. From 1753 to 1758 he went through the arts course at the University of Edinburgh. Returning to the university in 1758 to study law, he became enthralled by the theatre and fell in love with a Roman Catholic actress. Lord Auchinleck thought it prudent to send him to the University of Glasgow, where he attended the lectures of Adam Smith. In the spring of 1760 he ran away to London. He was, he soon found, passionately fond of metropolitan culture, gregarious, high-spirited, sensual, and attractive to women; and London offered just the combination of gross and refined pleasures that seemed to fulfill him. At this time he contracted gonorrhea, an affliction that he was to endure many times in the course of his life.
From 1760 to 1762 Boswell studied law at home under strict supervision and sought release from boredom in gallantry, in a waggish society called the Soaping Club, and in scribbling. His publications (many in verse and most of them anonymous) give no indication of conspicuous talent.
When Boswell came of age, he was eager to enter the foot guards. Lord Auchinleck agreed that if he passed his trials in civil law, he would receive a supplementary annuity and be allowed to go to London to seek a commission through influence. Boswell passed the examination in July 1762.
Anticipating great happiness, Boswell began, in the autumn, the journal that was to be the central expression of his genius. His great zest for life was not fully savoured until life was all written down, and he had a rare faculty for imaginative verbal reconstruction. His journal is much more dramatic than most because he wrote up each event as though he were still living through it, as if he had no knowledge of anything that had happened later. People in his journal talk and are given their characteristic gestures.
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In Holland Boswell befriended and unsuccessfully courted the novelist Isabella van Tuyll van Serooskerken (later called Isabelle de Charrière). He had been deeply affected by Johnson’s piety and on Christmas Day, in the ambassador’s chapel at The Hague, received communion for the first time in the Church of England. His pious program proved stimulating for a time but palled when it had lost its novelty. He received word that his little boy had died. In the depression that ensued he had recurring nightmares of being hanged. He was discouraged to find that dissipation brought him more happiness than chastity and hard work, and he soon lapsed into his former promiscuity.
From Utrecht, Boswell traveled to Berlin in the company of the old Jacobite Earl Marischal, friend and counselor of Frederick the Great, but he was never able to meet the king. Passing through Switzerland (December 1764), he secured interviews with both Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Voltaire. Boswell stayed nine months in Italy, devoting himself systematically to sightseeing. At Naples he established an intimacy with Wilkes (then outlawed) and traveled with Lord Mountstuart, eldest son of the earl of Bute, the chief target of Wilkes’s scurrilities.
May 16, 2013 · A meeting 250 years ago led to Scottish author James Boswell completely re-inventing how biography is written.
Jun 8, 2018 · 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.
Jun 10, 2015 · The 18th-century biographer James Boswell is the central character of a new exploration of the Enlightenment by Robert Zaretsky, who pulls together Boswell's writings with those of his subjects...
- Andrew O'hagan
Boswell is best known for his massive biography of Samuel Johnson. Although Boswell was not the first biographer in the English language, he is almost certainly the first modern biographer. His Life of Samuel Johnson is itself a literary masterwork.
His charm, sensitivity and intelligence opened doors to the most brilliant men of the day, but the ultimate prize for Boswell was his friendship with the towering figure of Dr Samuel Johnson – compiler of the definitive dictionary of the English language and celebrated man of letters.
