James Boswell
James Boswell - A Famous Scottish Biographer
James Boswell (1740 - 1795) was the son of a Scottish judge, he studied law and practised, with some success, at the Scottish bar. This was irksome to him, as it kept him in Edinburgh for most of his life, longing for London. He first visited London in 1760 at the age of 20, with huge social ambitions. It was on his London visit in 1763 that he met Sa,uel Johnson - Johnson, at 53, his dictionary published eight years before, was the greatest of literary lions; Boswell was a brash young provincial. Yet they soon became fast friends.
Boswell made his early reputation in 1798 with An Account of Corsica, the Journal of a Tour to that Island and Memoirs of Pascal Paoli. In this book there was already evidence of his extraordinary ability to use reported conversations as a medium for character study.
In 1785, more than 10 years after the event, he published The Journal of a Tour to the Hebides, with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. In 1791 came The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D., generally agreed to be the supreme masterpiece of the art of biography in English. What makes it so? In the first place Boswell, in his devotion to his task, seized every chance to make Johnson reveal himself in words or action over 21 years. HIs great industry recording in his journal even the most seemingly trivial things was helped by a phenomenal memory, "the best memory in the world for minutiae". And his untiring curiosity and constant mental excitement gave an unusual vividness to his initial impressions of things. Finally, he prepared a careful, artistic, and compelling narrative from his mass of material. Dr. Johnson is largely made to tell his own story through conversation and letters, and Boswell's boast that he would show him "more completely than any man who has ever yet lived" is perfectly justified. But the Life is more than the picture of a single man; Boswell also succeeded in "exhibiting a view of literature and literary men in Great Britain for near half a century".
Boswell's passionate and extravagant character and spasmodic irregularity of life make his massive journals all the more remarkable an achievement. Thousands of pages of his papers are still being published. Of these the London Journal 1762 - 63 is worth a special mention.
"Homer is not more decidedly the first of heroic poets, shakespeare is not more decidedly the first of dramatists, Demosthenes is not more decidedly the first of orators, than Boswell is the first of biographers." Macaulay.
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