The General Correspondence of James Boswell, 1766-1769, Vol. 1: 1766-1767 (Yale Editions of the Private Papers James Boswell Research Edition Correspondence, Vol. 5)

by James Boswell, Richard C. Cole (Editor), Peter S. Baker (Contributor)

This book is the first in a two-volume edition of James Boswell's correspondence during a period that was one of the happiest and most productive of his life―from his return from the Grand Tour in February 1766 to his marriage in November 1769. During this time Boswell became a practicing lawyer, a best-selling author, a family man, and a landowner as Laird of Dalblair. The correspondence―some 742 letters―gives a new perspective on Boswell's personal and professional development as well as on society, politics, gender issues, crime, theater, industry, agriculture, domestic life, religion, philosophy, publishing, and much more.

Volume I of the edition contains letters between Boswell and a rich diversity of correspondents, including Giuseppe Baretti, William Pitt the Elder, Voltaire, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, John Wilkes, and Zelide, the beautiful Dutch bluestocking. The texts have been transcribed from the original manuscripts. Carefully introduced and thoroughly annotated, the volume will be read with pleasure as well as for enlightenment.



Copublished with Edinburgh University Press

328 pages, Hardcover

First published June 28, 1993

About the author

James Boswell, 10th Laird of Auchinleck and 1st Baronet was a lawyer, diarist, and author born in Edinburgh, Scotland. He was the eldest son of a judge, Alexander Boswell, 8th Laird of Auchinleck and his wife Euphemia Erskine, Lady Auchinleck. Boswell's mother was a strict Calvinist, and he felt that his father was cold to him. Boswell, who is best known as Samuel Johnson’s biographer, inherited his father’s estate Auchinleck in Ayrshire. His name has passed into the English language as a term (Boswell, Boswellian, Boswellism) for a constant companion and observer.

Boswell is also known for the detailed and frank journals that he wrote for long periods of his life, which remained undiscovered until the 1920s. These included voluminous notes on the grand tour of Europe that he took as a young nobleman and, subsequently, of his tour of Scotland with Johnson. His journals also record meetings and conversations with eminent individuals belonging to The Club, including Lord Monboddo, David Garrick, Edmund Burke, Joshua Reynolds and Oliver Goldsmith. His written works focus chiefly on others, but he was admitted as a good companion and accomplished conversationalist in his own right.