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 and obsessions also darkened Johnson's private hours, and Boswell's attentiveness to every facet of Johnson's character makes this biography as moving as it is entertaining.In this entirely new and unabridged edition, David Womersley's introduction examines the motives behind Boswell's work, and the differences between the two men that drew them to each other. It also contains chronologies of Boswell and Johnson, appendices and comprehensive indexes, including biographical details.For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

In 1762 James Boswell, then twenty-two years old, left Edinburgh for London. The famous Journal he kept during the next nine months is an intimate account of his encounters with the high-life and the low-life in London. Frank and confessional as a personal portrait of the young Boswell, the Journal is also revealing as a vivid portrayal of life in eighteenth-century London. This new edition includes an introduction by Peter Ackroyd, which discusses Boswell’s life and achievement.“Boswell was the most charming companion in the world, and London becomes his dining-room and his playground, his club and his confessional. No celebrant of the London world can ignore his book.”—Peter Ackroyd, from the introduction. “Boswell was the most charming companion in the world, and London becomes his dining-room and his playground, his club and his confessional. No celebrant of the London world can ignore his book.”—Peter Ackroyd, from the Introduction. Praise for the earlier edition:"[The journal is] more perceptive and uninhibited and magically alive than one could have hoped. . . . Boswell transforms the most trifling occurrences into adventures, and imparts to the reader his own surpassing lust for experience and his keen sense of the fascination of life."—Austin Wright, Virginia Quarterly Review "The journal is admirably edited and annotated.”—W. H. Auden, New Yorker The late Frederick Pottle, Sterling Professor of English Emeritus at Yale University, was editor, bibliographer, and biographer of James Boswell. Peter Ackroyd is the author of London: The Biography, The Life of Thomas More, Albion: The Origins of the English Imagination, and many other books.

Travel journal first published in 1785. In 1773, Boswell enticed his famous 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. The two travellers set out from Edinburgh and skirted the eastern and northeastern coasts of Scotland, passing through St Andrews, Aberdeen and Inverness. They then passed into the highlands and spent several weeks on various islands in the Hebrides, including Skye, Coll, and Mull. After a visit to Boswell's estate at Auchinleck, the travellers returned to Edinburgh. Johnson published his Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland on 18 January 1775.

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Writer, rake, wit, traveler, and man-about-town, James Boswell kept a diary for thirty-three years, beginning just before his first trip to London and extending over his eventful life till shortly before his death in 1795. This one-volume selection of Boswell's journal entries, gathered and introduced by the distinguished poet and novelist John Wain, brings to life both a pre-eminent chronicler of eighteenth-century Britain and the tumultuous land about which he wrote so well.Boswell went everywhere, knew everyone, and never missed an opportunity to enjoy himself. His journals are compulsively mad, funny, pathetic, somber, candid about his uncontrollable appetites for women and alcohol, always touching in his fits of remorse and contrition toward his wife Margaret, who emerges from these pages as something of a heroine. Here is Boswell the clubman, the aspiring politician, the Scots laird proud of his ancient family, the observer of life. He collected celebrities (and wrote about visits to Rousseau and Voltaire, a last interview with the dying David Hume, a gossiping conversation with Sir Joshua Reynolds), yet he was no mere success-worshipper; admiration and love for his father-figure, Samuel Johnson, were as genuine as his love of life and his gift for friendship. Boswell once said he wrote mainly to store up entertainment for his afterlife. He was certainly successful in providing entertainment for those who read him now.

One of 60 low-priced classic texts published to celebrate Penguin's 60th anniversary. All the titles are extracts from "Penguin Classics" titles.

Book by Boswell, James

Memoranda and Letters from James Boswell's time in Holland studying law. The memoranda to himself are quite intimate and dealing with his day to day activities and his ongoing battle with depression.

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This volume, first in the Yale Research Series of Boswell's journals, covers his emotionally eventful youthful travels through the German and Swiss territories, from mid-June 1764 (after his law studies in Utrecht) to New Year's Day, 1765, when he crossed the Alps for the next stages of hisEuropean tour, in Italy, Corsica and France. The volume is the Research Series parallel to Boswell on the Grand Germany and Switzerland, 1764, ed. F. A. Pottle (1953), whose annotation the editor, Marlies K. Danziger, has greatly deepened, expanded, supplemented and in many casescorrected.

"Boswell's Life of Johnson" by James Boswell. Published by Good Press. Good Press publishes a wide range of titles that encompasses every genre. From well-known classics & literary fiction and non-fiction to forgotten−or yet undiscovered gems−of world literature, we issue the books that need to be read. Each Good Press edition has been meticulously edited and formatted to boost readability for all e-readers and devices. Our goal is to produce eBooks that are user-friendly and accessible to everyone in a high-quality digital format.

This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it.This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface.We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

No ISBN. This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curated for quality. Quality assurance was conducted on each of these books in an attempt to remove books with imperfections introduced by the digitization process. Though we have made best efforts - the books may have occasional errors that do not impede the reading experience. We believe this work is culturally important and have elected to bring the book back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide.

This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1816 edition. Excerpt: ...The part which depends on the imagination is very well supplied, as you will find when you read the paper; for descriptions of life, there is now a treaty almost made with an authour and an authoress; and the province of criticism and literature they are very desirous to 1753. assign to the commentator on Virgil. bv--' It is not improbable, that the " authour and authouress, with whom a treaty was almost made, --for descriptions of life," and who are mentioned in a manner that seems to indicate some connexion between them, were Henry, and his sister Sally, Fielding, as she was then popularly called. Fielding had previously been a periodical essayist, and certainly was well acquainted with life in all its varieties, more especially within the precincts of London; and his sister was a lively and ingenious vrriter. To this notion perhaps it may be objected, that no papers in The Adventurer are known to be their productions. But it should be remembered, that of several of the Essays in that work the authours are unknown; and some of these may have been written by the persons here supposed to be alluded to. Nor would the objection be decisive, even if it were ascertained that neither of them contributed any thing to The Advekturer; for the treaty above-mentioned wight afterwards have been broken off. The negotiator, doubtless, was Hawkesworth, and not Johnson.--Fielding was at this time in the highest reputation; having, in 1751, produced his Amelia, of which the whole impression was sold off on the day of its publication. Ma Lone. " I hope this proposal will not be rejected, and that the next post will bring us your compliance. I speak as one of the fraternity, though I have no part in the paper, beyond now and then a motto; but two of the...

Il giovane Boswell, nel corso del suo grand tour del 1763-1765, ha uno scopo che gli sta a cuore non meno delle visite alle varie corti d’Europa: conoscere personalmente i due astri intellettuali della sua epoca, Voltaire e Rousseau, che vivevano allora in più o meno volontariato confino in Svizzera, a poca distanza l’uno dall’altro. Due esseri opposti, egualmente difficili da avvicinare, con i quali Boswell, grazie alla sua straordinaria capacità di farsi benvolere, riuscì subito a stabilire un contatto. Il suo racconto di tali incontri è un esempio di eccelso giornalismo: da questo botta e risposta, che passa rapidamente dalle minuzie quotidiane ai problemi più vasti, ricaviamo un’impressione vivissima della maniera e del tono dei due scrittori: Rousseau, ipocondriaco, malato, vive in una casetta, accudito da Thérèse Le Vasseur (che dimostra subito un certo faible per il giovane visitatore inglese), parla di donne e di libri, di amicizia e di religione, con scatti d’umore che lo fanno passare dalla magnanimità all’intolleranza verso il suo interlocutore, il quale, per parte sua, resiste indefesso a ogni insolenza; Voltaire, mondano e mordace, nel suo castello di Ferney, parla di politica e di letteratura inglese senza perdere un’occasione per lanciare le sue frecciate, neghittoso e beffardo di fronte agli inviti a occuparsi dell’anima che il suo candido ospite si sente in dovere di rivolgergli. Con arte quasi inconsapevole, con un piglio di sorprendente modernità, Boswell è riuscito ad abbozzare un ritratto memorabile dei due più moderni fra i suoi contemporanei. Visita a Rousseau e a Voltaire è tratto da Boswell on the Grand Tour: Germany and Switzerland, uno dei numerosi volumi pubblicati a partire dal 1928 e comprendenti, fra l’altro, carte inedite.

No ISBN.In Boswell’s “The Life of Samuel Johnson”, one of the most gigantic figures of English literature is exposed with unparalleled immediacy and originality. This biography also details Johnson\'s prolific years in London where he gained popularity as a writer.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work.This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

with foldout map

This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book.

It's 1778, Boswell is now aproaching his 40th birthday, married with three young children and a fourth on its way. His father, the laird of Auchinleck, is ill and dying. Boswell himself is full of both the doubts of middle age and the pleasures of family life. Far removed from the rakish, scholarly and amorous adventures described in earlier journals, Boswell, Laird of Auchinleck records Boswell's daily trials and incidents as he struggles to manage the family estate of Auchinleck in Ayrshire. Full of momentary detail and flashes of self-knowledge, Boswell's journal is an insight into the mind of the mature diarist.

The last years in the life of the great eighteenth-century biographer are chronicled, including his struggle after his wife's death to raise five children alone, his feelings of failure about his work, and his joys in his later years

Selections from journals by Samuel Johnson's famous biographer document Boswell's experiences from his arrival in London in 1762 to his work as a lawyer in 1774