On October 29, 1740, James Boswell, diarist and biographer of Samuel Johnson, was born in Edinburgh. Boswell accompanied Johnson on a tour, retold in 'Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides', before producing his 'Life of Samuel Johnson' in 1791.
James Boswell
1740-1795
Born: Edinburgh
JAMES Boswell was a Edinburgh lawyer who liked drinking and indiscreet liaisons with prostitutes. He also loved to write. But he is best known for an encounter of a less salacious sort that happened on the evening of 16 May, 1763.
Boswell, then 22, was drinking tea in the back room of Thomas Davies's bookshop in London's Russell Street, when a large man in his 50s came into the shop. It was Samuel Johnson.
From 1772 onwards, the two men were closely associated, and in 1773 Boswell joined Johnson's literary club. From that time he chronicled Johnson's converations and activities in great detail. The same year, he and Johnson toured Scotland, described by Boswell in ' The Journal of a Tour of the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson', published in 1785. His most famous work , 'The Life of Samuel Johnson', appeared in 1791.
For many years, Boswell was thought of as a gambling, womanising drunkard, whose masterpiece was an accidental work of genius. It was only when his journals were published that his reputation was reassessed.
His recently published Edinburgh diaries reveal a vivid impression of Edinburgh in the Enlightenment, and his London Journal, with its rollicking tales of drunkenness and debauchery, whores and hangovers, is the rake's progress writ large and lascivious.
