Imatge de l'autor

James Boswell (1) (1740–1795)

Autor/a de The Life of Samuel Johnson

Per altres autors anomenats James Boswell, vegeu la pàgina de desambiguació.

307+ obres 9,474 Membres 102 Ressenyes 31 preferits

Sobre l'autor

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. mostra'n més However, his legal practice did not prevent him from 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. mostra'n menys
Crèdit de la imatge: Boswell reedited

Sèrie

Obres de James Boswell

The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791) 3,879 exemplars
Boswell's London Journal 1762-1763 (1950) 1,466 exemplars
Journals of the Western Islands (1775) 818 exemplars
Meeting Dr. Johnson (1996) 109 exemplars
The Portable Johnson & Boswell (1947) 97 exemplars
Everybody's Boswell (1930) 68 exemplars
Life of Johnson - Vol. 1 (1914) 61 exemplars
Life of Johnson - Vol. 2 (1791) 55 exemplars
Boswell's Column 1777-1783 (1951) 28 exemplars
Boswell in Extremes, 1776-1778 (1970) 28 exemplars
Visita a Rousseau e a Voltaire (1990) 19 exemplars
Life of Johnson - Vol. 5 (2003) 12 exemplars
Life of Johnson - Vol. 6 (2011) 11 exemplars
Life of Johnson, Volume 2 (1949) 9 exemplars
A Shorter Boswell 9 exemplars
Boswell on the Grand Tour (1993) 9 exemplars
Dorando : a Spanish tale (1974) 8 exemplars
Letters of James Boswell (1924) 7 exemplars
Corsica. ( Korsika) (1989) 4 exemplars
LETTERS OF JAMES BOSWELL (2013) — Autor — 3 exemplars
The Hypochondriack (1928) 2 exemplars
BOSWELL'S LIFE OF DR.JOHNSON (1890) 2 exemplars
Arte de la biografía — Col·laborador — 2 exemplars
The Douglas cause 2 exemplars
Life of Johnson I 1 exemplars
Life of Johnson Volume 5 (2020) 1 exemplars
Journals 1 exemplars
Boswell's London (1978) 1 exemplars
BOSWELLS COLUMN 1 exemplars
Piozzian rhimes 1 exemplars
Life of Johnson - Vol. 4 (2010) 1 exemplars
James Johnson 1 exemplars
The Scots magazine 1 exemplars
Vida del Doctor Samuel Johnson (1949) 1 exemplars

Obres associades

The Assassin's Cloak: An Anthology of the World's Greatest Diarists (2000) — Col·laborador, algunes edicions550 exemplars
The Literary Cat (1977) — Col·laborador — 241 exemplars
The Art of Fact: A Historical Anthology of Literary Journalism (1997) — Col·laborador — 214 exemplars
Eighteenth-Century English Literature (1969) — Autor — 186 exemplars
Candide [Norton Critical Edition, 1st ed.] (1966) — Col·laborador — 151 exemplars
Major British Writers, Volumes I and II (1954) — Col·laborador — 122 exemplars
The Norton Book of Travel (1987) — Col·laborador — 110 exemplars
The Norton Book of Friendship (1991) — Col·laborador — 95 exemplars

Etiquetat

Coneixement comú

Altres noms
Laird of Auchinleck
Data de naixement
1740-10-29
Data de defunció
1795-05-19
Lloc d'enterrament
Auchinleck Church, Auchinleck, Ayrshire, Scotland, UK
Gènere
male
Nacionalitat
UK
País (per posar en el mapa)
Scotland, UK
Lloc de naixement
Edinburgh, Scotland, UK
Lloc de defunció
London, England, UK
Llocs de residència
London, England, UK
Auchinleck, Scotland, UK
Educació
University of Edinburgh
University of Glasgow
University of Utrecht
Edinburgh High School
Professions
lawyer
author
biographer
diarist
Relacions
Johnson, Samuel (friend)
Boswell, Alexander (son)
Organitzacions
The Literary Club
Freemasons
Biografia breu
James Boswell's fame and accomplishments are such that his name has become synonymous with a close friend and biographer. Although many of his great works and correspondence were lost to scholars for many years, they were fortunately discovered in the 1920s and later published.

Membres

Converses

How do I catalogue a book which contains 2 works a Talk about LibraryThing (juliol 2011)

Ressenyes

Fascinating, for several reasons: that Johnson is an extraordinary character, that London in the 1760s was an exciting place, that Boswell’s anecdotal voice is pleasurable to read - not least because of the cross-currents of ideas (current today) that were being tested as they flowed through and around what is quite an intimate relationship between the two men.

On the one hand, Boswell, when invited to dinner at Johnson’s house had low expectations:
I supposed we scarcely have knives and forks…but the fact was we had very good soup, a boiled leg of lamb and spinach, a veal pie. and a rice pudding. (p.164)
and on the other the pervasive influences of Rousseau (dismissed by Johnson as nonsense)
…the happiness of a savage life;…’Here I am free and unrestrained, amidst the rude magnificence of Nature, with this Indian woman by my side, and this gun with which I can procure food when I want it: what more can be desired for human happiness?’…Johnson. …gross absurdity. It is sad stuff; it is brutish…(p.166)
Johnson has a tendency to make assertions with little foundation or evidence other than the weight of a turn of phrase or contrarian obstinance.
…he loved to display his ingenuity in argument; and therefore would sometimes in conversation maintain opinions which he was sensible were wrong, but in supporting which, his reasoning and wit would be most conspicuous. (p. 209)
I found myself noting many passages. One I thought applied to me and I'll note is here for reference
'Sir, a man may be so much of every thing, that he is nothing of any thing'. (p.288)


Perhaps it’s that the anecdotes include so many notable encounters amidst the daily routines of eating and visiting that this ‘Life’ can't help but be consumed, not just as an intellectual journey but where tangible remnants in the physical world prompt other depths: I've been fortunate to have visited Dr Johnson's house in London at 17 Gough Square, my sister once gave me a William Hogarth illustration from [b:The Analysis of Beauty|23672505|The Analysis of Beauty (Dover Books of Fine Art)|William Hogarth|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1429097330l/23672505._SY75_.jpg|916332], and from my maternal grandfather, I have a complete 1805 set of The Plays of William Shakespeare which includes Dr Johnson's Preface.

I'll now exhume my memories of Gough Square, explore Hogarth's The Analysis of Beauty, and read Dr Johnson's Preface to Shakespeare. The danger is that I'll become obsessed with 18th Century London.
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simonpockley | Hi ha 40 ressenyes més | Feb 25, 2024 |
James Boswell was chiefly known asthe biographer of Samuel Johnson, and his journal of the rip to the Hebrides and life of Johnson were often reprinted in the noneteenth and early twentieth centuries. Boswell's other papers, including his masses of journals were consigned to the libraries of his descendants, who were a good deal less impressed by the memories of the private man, as oppposed to the monumental biographer. These respectable Prebyterians regarded James B, as a very poor specimen of humanity. Here the papers moldered until 1948, when the journals were gifted to Yale University in the USA. Frederick Pottle idly encuntered them in the catalogue, and read with increasing enthusiasm, the mass. It was the equivalent of Samuel Pepys' diary, so far as evoking the image and spirit and rhythmn of the 18th century British upper class. By 1950, the first volume chronicling Boswell's descent upon London, where he was trying to get himself a commission in the Guards' Regiments, allowing himself complete access to London literary and theatrical life, while enjoying a healthy allowance from his father, a pillar of the Scottish Bar. James B, inevitably clashed with that man, who much wished for his son to follow in his own respectable and financially remunerative footsteps. But, while Boswell was in London, he was in what he would have called the thick of the social whirl, in a bubbling of private culture. At this time, Boswell was writing everything down that he could remember before turning in for the night, and it creates a rich portrait of this cultural period. It reads extremely well, and Pottle provides a competent critical framework for appreciating the journal
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DinadansFriend | Hi ha 16 ressenyes més | Dec 22, 2023 |
How charming! This is the way to read Boswell.
 
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therebelprince | Hi ha 1 ressenya més | Oct 24, 2023 |
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 in preventing the execution of his client, an evemt that affecterd him deeply.
Thr 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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DinadansFriend | Aug 25, 2023 |

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Autors associats

Samuel Johnson Contributor, Author

Estadístiques

Obres
307
També de
17
Membres
9,474
Popularitat
#2,537
Valoració
4.1
Ressenyes
102
ISBN
346
Llengües
12
Preferit
31

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