Have you read Boswell?

Django posted (on another thread) the following:
2009-10-20, 10:48pm Django6924
The questions is: Boswell's The Life of Samuel Johnson is widely recognized as the greatest biography ever written--in English, anyway--but I have always been surprised by how FEW people, even well-read people, have ever read it. Folio published a 2 volume edition forty years ago, and reissued it in 1990, but such scant attention paid to one of the monuments of English literature makes me doubt whether it was a big seller. (Actually, the London Journal seems to get more comment and remains still in the catalogue.)

So--the question for those who bother to read this thread is: have YOU read Boswell's The Life of Samuel Johnson? (And as an afterthought, have you read any of Boswell's other works? I personally think his journals rank with Pepys, and deserve a similar treatment to the LE Pepys.

>1 Osbaldistone:
Well, I've read Boswell's London Journal and his Journal of a Tour of the Hebrides. I've used The Life of Samuel Johnson more as a reference up until now - that is, dipping in at sections related to Boswell's journals or related to the Dictionary. Being interested in words and language and their origins and evolution, it was the dictionary that got me interested in Johnson and thus Boswell. And I've not looked at the Biography for quite awhile. Guess it's time to get serious and just read it.

Os.

I've read the Life, the Hebrides Journal and the first six volumes in the Yale series of his journals, with the definite goal of reading them all eventually. There's also his Account of Corsica.

>3 jfclark:
I have to admit, I've wanted to acquire the Yale series ever since I read the London Journal. I agree with Django - his journals are a pleasure to read. As good as Pepys? Perhaps. Definitely easier to read the more modern English. Pepys access to history is a big attraction, though. However, the day-to-day life stuff is wonderful in both Pepys and Boswell.

Os.

Like Osbaldistone, I've only dipped into the Life of Johnson from time to time, though I know I really must read it from cover to cover some time.

I've read the London Journal a couple of times, and many years ago borrowed the follow-up volume in the Yale series (Boswell in Holland) from a public library (it was the only one of the journals in their catalogue). I want to read the others, but then there are so many books clamouring to be bought. If Folio ever bring out a full set of the journals I'll certainly buy.

Yes, I have read the unabridged Life of Samuel Johnson and it ranks highly amongst the books I have read. I would have had an even better experience, I think, had I a knowledge of Latin (which I am trying hard to rectify), I would have had enjoyed it even more.
I have not read Pepys, so I cannot compare. Boswell, being an advocate and barrister was of course adept in wielding arguments, and so, I am convinced has painted his friend and mentor, Samuel Johnson, in a more favourable light than perhaps many others of his contemporaries might have.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading Journal of a Tour of the Hebrides. Indeed, it was a relief to read this after I had read Johnson's own The Journey to the Western Islands Scotland which I found quite distasteful.

Same for me, LesMiserables: I found Johnson's Journey relation quite poor. Boswell's account of the same journey is much more lively. I also read Boswell's Life of Johnson, which was difficult for me because I lacked the literary and cultural background of the 18c. It was still harder when it dealt with Scottish law cases. However, this is a book I'd like to re-read if I could find the opportunity.

To me, the best of Boswell is his London Journal. Just as most of you here, I'd like to have more of his journals published.

Some of you wondered about a Boswell group on LT. But are you aware of The Turk's Head group (not very active) or the 18th Century British Literature group (not very active too). Do you want to make alive again one of these two groups?

When reading Johnson's tour, I protested strongly against his titanic sectarianism. I found his off the cuff remarks, almost totally derogatory, against the Scots (and Gaeldom in general) to be at odds with his well known Jacobean preferences. It was of course the very highlanders that disgusted him who raised the standard for Prince Charles Edward Stuart.

I have just bought Boswell's Life of Johnson in two Everyman pocket editions, so maybe it will make the winter reading list. I also bought Samuel Johnsons lives of the poets in two volumes too. Will report anon. I think the only Journey I have is the Dutch one.

I have all the Yale editions (both 'trade' and 'reasearch') and I'm steadily working through them. I've got as far as his Corsican adventure - a new edition of Boswell's book has recently been published. Boswell is an endlessly fascinating character, the detailed exploration of which is made possible by the sheer volume of papers that have survived. Most of these are now held at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale and after 60 years scholars are still working on them. I probably won't even live to see the end of it. The catalog(ue) itself runs to three volumes. And yet, those papers were very nearly lost to posterity.

For all those who love literary detective stories (have you read The Quest for Corvo in the FS edition?) you won't be disappointed with either The Treasure of Auchinleck by David Buchanan or Pride and Negligence by Frederick Pottle (I love that name): how, when Boswell was studying law in Holland, he entrusted part of his precious journal to an acquaintance to take it back to Scotland - it was never seen again; how in the 19th century pages from the journal turned up as wrapping paper being used in a shop, how in the 1920s Colonel Ralph Isham heard about some papers being discovered in Ireland and how he set himself the task of buying them up and taking them to America. Then more turned up in Scotland - every time the poor colonel thought he'd amassed the complete collection, another hoard was discovered in an old locker room, in some outbuildings, in a croquet box.... In the end he was all but bankrupted - the Wall Street Crash didn't help either. Then there were the law suits, the subterfuges, the threats of witholding, censoring, even burning the papers, but culminating first in a magnificent private edition of the papers, designed by Bruce Rogers (who incidentally then goes off to commission a translation of The Odyssey from Laurence of Arabia), and later the triumphant publication of the trade edition of the magnificent London Journal in 1950. Wow! - all this and we haven't even read them yet!

And what of Boswell himself? Like Pepys, he has all the failings which attract us to a person. He's arrogant and ambitious, yes, but also vulnerable and tender. Above all, he's a good listener and much of what we know of Dr Johnson's wit and wisdom comes through the eyes and ears of Boswell. He gives us a magnificent picture of the Grand Tour, visits the courts of the German States (he's miffed that Frederick the Great won't grant him an audience). He compensates by quizzing Voltaire and Rousseau and goes on to champion the cause of Corsican independence.

Who couldn't be interested in such a character?

And what about Thrale's Life of Johnson? Did anybody here read it? (By the way, I read this summer Peter Martin's Samuel Johnson: a Biography. Much easier to read than Boswell, actually. I loved it.)

Concerning Boswell, Paoli and Corsica, I've always been surprised, when looking into bookshops in Corsica where they normally have many books on Corsican independence, that Boswell's Account on Corsica is virtually unknown. I guess however that it was once translated to French, perhaps even to Corsican. I never read it. Did somebody here? Maybe jfclark?

As for the respective merits of Boswell vs. Pepys, I'm afraid I can't make any comment here...

>6 LesMiserables:
I figured this thread would catch LesMis's eye - one, because it's about a fellow Scot, and two, because I figured he'd love Samuel Johnson's opinion of the Scots. ;-) Actually, I think Johnson was perfectly capable of liking a Scot; he just couldn't lose the view of Scots that I'm sure he received from his upbringing. My paternal grandmother, rest her soul, had the same kind of problem with her mind-set about Black's/African-Americans, but, to her credit, she recognized it and made a concious effort not to pass it on to my Dad. As an adult, he realized what a gift he had received.

As you alluded to, LesMis, I think my full reading of Boswell's Johnson bio will wait until I've worked through Wheelock so I have a chance at all the Latin. This will help with any of Johnson's writings to, though I Boswell will get priority.

I first saw a copy of Boswell's Tour of the Hebrides on a library shelf at the "Bishop's House" on Iona. I read the bit about Iona right there and then put the book on my 'to acquire' list. The short time I had in Oban, Mull, and Iona was wonderful, but that's getting off topic (again).

Os.

And I just love to throw in, when I can, during conversation, the likes of....

Oh, come on, that's so Boswellian

Most folk get Machiavellian, but Boswell? No.

I've read and appreciated the unabridged Life, but nothing else of Boswell's. My edition was an overweight Oxford Classics, which predictably fell to pieces towards the end - one reason why I would welcome a new Folio treatment of this work.

A well bound and affordable hardback is the Everymans edition.

I started this thread on Django's behalf (see OP), but he's not posted. And in the post of his which I used to start the thread, he doesn't answer the question.

So, Django, have you read Boswell's Life of Johnson?

Os.

Sorry, Os, I've been very busy and also have been enjoying the posts of others. I meant to thank you for starting this thread, and so I do!

Yes, I've read the biography twice--once when I received a three-volume edition of it when I was 19 as the perk for renewing my Heritage Club membership; price, $5.95. I still have that edition today, which looks as good as it did new, even though I read it again when I was a graduate student taking a course in 18th century literature (this is where I also read the London Journal for the first time (and loved it so much I bought 5 more journals, which weren't required reading).

The cumulative effect of reading the entire biography, rather than just excerpts, is really remarkable. Johnson, despite his talents, and his genuine admirers, must have been an incredibly difficult man to like, yet at the end of reading Boswell, I feel as though I know him, and that I'm the better for that knowledge. I certainly feel that I enjoyed his biographer's writing more than anything I ever read by Johnson himself--Rasselas: Prince of Abyssinia. some of his Rambler essays, and Lives of the English Poets--mainly because a sense of humor comes across in he biography that lacks the bitterness and malicious streak of Johnson's satirical works.

edited for typos

>15 LesMiserables: - I read somewhere aht passages are missing from that one, or something like that.

Samuel Johnson: In England we wouldn't think of eating oats. We only feed them to Horses.
Boswell: "Well, maybe that's why in England you have better horses, and in Scotland we have better men".

Classic. ;-)

>19 LesMiserables:
From Johnson's dictionary:
Oats: A grain, which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland appears to support the people

I happen to love oatmeal/porridge, myself (and oatmeal cookies).

Os.

Every morning for me. A bowl or porridge. Nothing in it but the water that has cooked it.

Love porridge - eat it every morning, and I'm English with not a trace of Scottish blood. I never put salt in it though as I like it sweet with a bit of sugar and some raisons tossed in.

Love Johnson and Boswell too - but I have only dipped into the life and not read it cover to cover, which no doubt is a magnificent reading experience.

>22 Quicksilver66:

"Were raisons as plentiful as blueberries, I would give no man raisons on his oatmeal--except on compulsion!"

(Loosely paraphrasing Falstaff in Henry IV, Part 1--interesting how your typo jogged my memory of learning of this very subtle pun back when I was a grad student taking Shakespeare!)

Well, I like buttermilk on my oatmeal--my father ate it that way, which revolted me when I was a kid, but like Mark Twain, when I got a few years older realized how much smarter the old man must have been.

For any planning a complete reading of the Life of Samuel Johnson, I recommend the 3 volume Heritage Press edition with marginalia by Hester Lynch Thrale Piozzi. There are no sensational exposures in Mrs. Thrale's comments (more's the pity) but she does provide an interesting commentary on Boswell's portrait, from a much different perspective.

But did you read the complete biography by Mrs. Thrale, Django?

In fact I haven't--but I will be on the lookout for it when my stack of unread Folios and LECs permit me voyage in search of new books to add to the library.

Have you read it? I suspect, from reading the marginalia in the Heritage edition of Boswell's biography, Mrs. Thrale might have a keener and more objective perspective on Johnson's foibles as a human.

No, I haven't read it either. I'm just like you: from what I read of her, I suspect too that she probably wrote quite interesting memoirs, including a rather objective judgement on Boswell himself.

And there is also this early biographer of Johnson's who published his book shortly before Boswell's Life. (Can't remember his name.) Any comment on him?

Sir John Hawkins wrote the first full biography of Johnson, but I haven't read his work either. Nor have I read Fanny Burney's Memoirs of her relations with Dr. Johnson (nor any of that remarkable woman's other literary efforts, for which I feel very guilty, as by all accounts she was exceptionally talented). So completely has Boswell's work dominated, that his book has eclipsed most other biographies and even Johnson's own works.

#27 - there's another Folio Society book you must add to your wishlist: FS published Fanny Burney's Diary in 1961 - and an excellent read it is too!

#28: Why don't they republish it? And/or Hawkins's biography? And/or Thrale's biography? I would buy the 3 of them les yeux fermés.

I too have read Journal of a Tour of the Hebrides and The Journey to the Western Islands Scotland as well as Boswells London and Holland journals.

I cannot help but think, whenever Boswell is sopken of disparagingly, and when his 'spin' of the Johnson story is questioned for accuracy, that maybe we only know and love SJ because of B's journalistic ability to make Johnson and his world come alive.

Maybe the enduring quality of Pepys and Boswell are a function of this ability to write in a journalistic style which fits the 20th/21st century mindset?

> 23 Buttermilk on porridge sounds very nice. I must give it a try.

Yesterday I picked up a very nice edition of Johnson in a London bookshop. It's a very full hardback selection bound in a kind of light blue buckram. The publisher was called Reynard and it was part of a series called Reynard Library. It looks like a 60's reprint of a 50's title. it's a realy good selection with Rasselas in full and selections from Lives of the Poets, Commentary on Shakespeare, Tatler and Spectator and much more. It's in perfect condition and only cost £6.00 !!

When you are tired of Johnson then you are tired of life.

I know it's a bit off topic, but has someone here bought The Lives of the Poets in the edition Folio published ~2 yrs ago?

>28 appaloosaman:

Thanks for the recommendation--I'll check for a used copy!

I'm afraid I'd never heard of Boswell previously... they don't teach us overly well in English schools nowadays :)

I've just bought the London Journal secondhand off ebay to give him a go. I rarely venture outside the reading realm of fiction... I'd say it's 'youth' making me lazy that way but mustn't stereotype.

I'm afraid I'd never heard of Boswell previously... they don't teach us overly well in English schools nowadays :)

I've just bought the London Journal secondhand off ebay to give him a go. I rarely venture outside the reading realm of fiction... I'd say it's 'youth' making me lazy that way but mustn't stereotype.

I'm reviving this wonderful and insightful thread. All this is in my TBR list unfortunately. Anyone care to do a must-read list of books on which one should start off with?

Yes, like others, I have read Boswell's London Journal as published by the FS.

I recall reading a book of edited sections from Pepys Diary that may have been a FS publication some years ago. My copy must still be in storage. Poor Mr. Pepys was "much afeared" when he had accidently struck Mrs. Pepys with his elbow while asleep. I can only imagine the level of fear had he purchased too many Folio books.

I do have the Boswell biography of Johnson in the Britannica's Great Books but I have only sampled bits but not pieces. (I had to avoid the Dave Clark Five song title.)

37

Basically, Johnson and Boswell paraded themselves through Scotland and both wrote of their experiences as is described in this thread. Boswell subsequently went on to write a biography of Johnson.

I read them in this order...

1. A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland - Samuel Johnson
2. A Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides - James Boswell
3. The Life of Samuel Johnson - James Boswell

I would see no reason to alter that, but if I had too, I would read the biography first then the two journals.

A useless piece of personal trivia: Around the time I read these, (and I read them around the same time back at the turn of 2007/2008) I also read Waverley - Sir Walter Scott, Calum's Road - Roger Hutchinson, A Waxing Moon, The Modern Gaelic Revival - Roger Hutchinson.

A great burst of cultural and literary reading which I remember fondly.

I've found this:

https://www.librarything.com/work/15560253/book/114708311

An 11 volume collection from the Cambridge Library Collection.

Supplementary to my post #10 above:

The best place to start with Boswell the man (as opposed to Boswell the great biographer) is the London Journal, 1762-3. This, as has been said, is available in a Folio edition. It happens to be one of the very best portions of Boswell's life-long journals which is an added bonus.

After Yale University acquired virtually all the Boswell manuscripts (and there are a lot of them) in the late 1940s, a research team was set up and between 1950 and 1989 all of Boswell's journals were published in a trade edition of 13 volumes, beginning with the London Journal. These were published by McGraw Hill in the US and by Heinemann (Edinburgh University Press for the last couple) in the UK. Most are now out of print but easily and cheaply available on the second-hand market. They are annotated for the general reader.

Collectively, they tell the tale of Boswell's life, loves, private and professional life as a lawyer, his legal training in Holland and his subsequent travels in Europe on his Grand Tour. Boswell is by turns exuberant, morose, wrestling with his conscience, striving to live a more modest, sober life, and then failing miserably. He is whoring in London parks, looking for a wife among the gentry, intriguing with Italian courtesans, interviewing Rousseau, Voltaire and the leader of the Corsican struggle for independence, striving to be a man of letters and carefully noting down everything that falls from Samuel Johnson's lips.

http://boswelleditions.yale.edu/trade-edition (The books are listed in reverse chronological order)

Portraits by Sir Joshua Reynolds is out-of-series and consists of short written biographies of many of the famous literary figures mentioned in the journals.

The first six journal volumes (i.e, excluding Portraits) were also published by Heinemann in very handsome slipcased limited editions, printed on superior laid paper and quarter bound in white vellum (with leather spine labels) and dark blue cloth.

Also recommended are the two volumes of biography, the 'Earlier Years' and the 'Later Years', by Frederick Pottle and Frank Brady, respectively.

http://boswelleditions.yale.edu/associated-volumes
______________

For true die-hards, a Yale Research Edition, with more detailed and scholarly notes, is under way, with many volumes still to be published. These books are published jointly by Yale University Press and Edinburgh University Press. As well as the journals, they are publishing Boswell's extensive correspondence and an edition in 4 volumes of the manuscript of the 'Life of Johnson'.

http://boswelleditions.yale.edu/research-editions

41

A great erudite supplement!

>36 ironjaw:

So glad you revived the thread. I'd missed it the first time 'round, and it's been very edifying.

>43 elenchus: Your welcome but true gratitude should be directed to Osbaldistone for creating this thread and Robert, Django for mentioning Boswell as well as Jonathan, Boldface for an exemplary and in-depth introduction to materials about Boswell.

Thank you everyone for all the added information . I plan to print out this thread and leave inside my Boswell collection . I am still trying to complete my Yale (trade edition) Boswell set . some volumes more common than others but leaves something worth searching for . I have the FS edition of Boswell's life of Johnson. I like to dip into Boswell and found the whole story of the Boswell papers and how Yale acquired the papers fascinating. I once researched and wrote a paper on the Scottish tour but never published it (for an 18th C celebratory conference). One man worth reading for similar ground covered, is Thomas Pennant I have a 3rd edition (1774 ) of his 1769 Scottish tour . The fascination lies in the insights of Highland life after. The 1745 debacle and before the clearances . I also recommend John Prebble from an historical perspective . I only own paperbacks of these something else to get as a good set .

Has anybody here ever tried (or ever dreamed) to re-enact Johnson and Boswell's journey in the western isles? This is something I'd like to do when I retire (in a couple of months). I'm probably not alone with this idea in mind, and perhaps there is even a road with signposts "Johnson & Boswell Road", who knows?

What a wonderful idea Pepys. Alas I'm unfortunately not independently wealthy or near retirement age to plan such a venture but if I had the means and time I would have tagged along, if you wouldn't have minded my company.

>46 Pepys: >47 ironjaw:

An inspired idea: both the journey and the fellowship.

46

No but i have a few routes I wish to take nonetheless.

1) Stevenson's route with Modestine in France (Travels with a donkey)
2) Stevenson's Kidnapped route of Davie and Alan.
3) The Chartres pilgrimage.

>46 Pepys: I don't know the exact itinerary of the trip Johnson and Boswell made, but I did a bike trip in 2003 that included lots of the places listed in the list of illustrations of the FS edition of the Journals and seems to follow the map f their itinerary printed in the book: Skye, Mull(and Tobermory), Inverness, St Andrews, and Edinburgh. There was lots more in the Highlands. I, of course, didn't do it because I was inspired by the Journal, but just because I am a cycling fanatic and had long wanted to see the Highlands. And it was wonderful to do it on a bike.

I highly recommend you follow through with this trip.

I gladly accept any company on my tour. The fact is that I thought it would be a good way to discover the western isles, instead of going there at random. I don't believe one has to be particularly wealthy to do that, and I intend to do just as Boswell and Johnson did: to stop over in castles and ask hospitality for free. Given the well-known generosity and prodigality of the Scots, it shouldn't be a problem. ;-)

May I recommend, concerning Johnson, the biography by Peter Martin: Samuel Johnson: A Biography. I wrote, in my review, some interesting anecdotes, such as:

Frances Reynolds, the great portraitist’s wife, was another keen observer of Johnson’s habits. Once they had taken Johnson on a trip to Reynolds’s native Devonshire and had stopped near Dorchester to visit a castle, Johnson became bored by the owner’s explanations and ‘began to exhibit his antics, stretching out his legs alternately as far as he could possibly stretch; at the same time pressing his foot on the floor as heavily as he could possibly press, as if endeavouring to smooth the carpet, or rather perhaps to rumple it, and every now and then collecting all his force, apparently to affect a concussion of the floor’. ‘Dr Johnson, I believe the floor is very firm’, the guide remarked, which made him stop. In another place they visited, Johnson amazed his hostess by drinking seventeen cups of tea in one sitting. (She had counted them.) When he asked for one more, she cried out, ‘What! Another, Dr Johnson?’, to which he replied, ‘Madam, you are rude.’

And to come back to Boswell, this is part of what I wrote in my review of his Journal to the western isles:

"What I recollect best is the occasional amazing behaviour of Johnson, for instance upon his arrival in Edinburgh, when he settles in an inn and sends a note to Boswell to let him know his arrival. We learn afterwards that Johnson was scandalized by the inn waiter's using his fingers to put a lump of sugar in the lemonade Johnson had ordered. Apparently he would have liked to smash him against the wall for daring doing this.

Boswell also made me laugh with his report of the last breakfast they had in the Isles. The house lady asked Boswell who was first up, if Johnson would like to have a cold mutton head for breakfast. Her husband was horrified and tried to persuade her that it was not suitable. But Boswell very maliciously replied that yes, why not, although he knew in advance what would be Johnson's reaction. Then he sat in an armchair and took a book for a countenance. When Johnson came down from his bedroom, he first replied 'No' to the question 'Dr Johnson, have you taken some cold mutton head?'. But, as the house lady misunderstood the answer and insisted, he had to be ruder. In his armchair behind his book, Boswell was smiling."

>51 Pepys: Johnson's hostess should have deployed the traditional Edinburgh welcome:
"You'll have had your tea."

As one of the few West Highlanders on FSD, I commend your plan. You might be surprised at the hospitality offered by de luxe venues there if you pitched it as a pilot of a modern-day Johnson's Tour and promised to feature them in a subsequent up-market USA travel guide (which, displaying guid Scots prudence, you would have been commissioned by to cover your costs in the first place).

To inspire you, and set you on your way:

A far croonin' is pullin' me away
As take I wi' my cromack to the road.
The far Cuillins are puttin' love on me
As step I wi' the sunlight for my load.

Chorus:

Sure by Tummel and Loch Rannoch and Lochaber I will go
By heather tracks wi' heaven in their wiles.
If it's thinkin' in your inner heart the braggart's in my step
You've never smelled the tangle o' the Isles.
Oh the far Cuillins are puttin' love on me
As step I wi' my cromack to the Isles.

It's by Shiel water the track is to the west
By Ailort and by Morar to the sea
The cool cresses I am thinkin' of for pluck
And bracken for a wink on Mother knee.

The blue islands are pullin' me away
Their laughter puts the leap upon the lame
The blue islands from the Skerries to the Lews
Wi' heather honey taste upon each name.

>53 Polar_bear:
As one of the few West Highlanders on FSD: How interesting! A place to stop over?

>54 Pepys: Owing to being an economic migrant, I find myself in exile at present; from Glen to Fen as it were... I will return if I ever cease to be poor as a church mouse...but my acute FAD doesn't help!

>46 Pepys: I have this in my library to read list - Skye High: The Record of a Tour Through Scotland in the Wake of Samuel Johnson and James Boswell by Hesketh Pearson and Hugh Kingsmill

It's a journal of just such a tour. The publisher writes: "What literary "doubles act" can ever equal that of Samuel Johnson and James Boswell? Well, two 20th-century English men-of-letters came close, with this witty and well-written account of their 1936 travels through Scotland in the two-hundred-year-old footsteps of The Great Cham and his biographer."

Does anyone else think it worth reviving the Group called 18th Century British Literature?

If so, please post a suitable topic in that group and we can make it active again.

>57 Chawton:

(I've posted this reply in the 18th Century British Literature group as well.)

Yes, I'm interested. Let's hope a few more follow suit. My current areas of interest here are Boswell and the numerous connections that arise from this, i.e., Johnson, the Thrales, the Burneys, members of The Club, etc.

I'm working my way through all the Yale Boswell editions (to date) and also the Isham/Bruce Rogers Private Papers of James Boswell. I've also acquired all the Oxford/McGill Burney Letters and Journals and several editions of the Life of Johnson, including the LEC one with Hester Piozzi's (Thrale) marginal annotations. in the tbr pile there are also various other biographies and ancillary works connected with these writers. This is all very much "work in progress" but I'm interested to discuss any aspects as far as I'm able. It's a huge subject to study and an absorbing one. The whole incredible story of the rediscovery of the Boswell papers alone is both amazing and exciting.

On the fiction front, I've only fairly recently turned to the eighteenth century from the nineteenth, but I've read Fanny Burney's Evelina (and have the others in the pipeline), a few Smollets, Austen of course (although not very recently - I must re-read them very soon!), some Fielding, Richardson, etc. And I have the Folio box set of the Ann Radcliffe novels which I'm keen to explore. Time! Time!

yes I would be interested- great period, great literature and I am very interested in Boswell and Johnson. I have dipped into the diaries . Yes I think Boswell ranks with Pepys. I also read the Hebrides tour and once wrote an academic paper about this for an 18th C studies conference in Johannesburg ( all about music and literature ) ( pre computer days - so heavens knows if I can find it ) . I recall I was interested in linking the Hebrides tour to account of other 18th C tourists ( except they were more adventurers than tourists in Scotland). I am still looking to complete my Yale Boswell series - but the ones I lack are now quite expensive.

I tried to contact the administrator of the group I mentioned to see if they were interested in having it reactivated but did not get a reply.

I have accordingly started a new group called 'Eighteenth Century English Literature (1660 to 1832)'.

I hope it takes off and will post tomorrow about Richardson.

>60 Chawton: "Eighteenth Century English Literature (1660 to 1832)"

Oh good! So we can now include Walter Scott, another burgeoning interest of mine.

>62 EclecticIndulgence:

Very nice, but the print must be tiny!

>56 Osbaldistone: Thank you, Os. I take good note of this reference. I still have such a tour in mind for the coming years. I've never visited the Western Isles of Scotland.

Hi there, Pepys ! Long time no talk, as the good Doctor might have phrased it.
Re your no 46 (only just read it this morning - I'm a slow reader).
I remember a tv programme about 20/25 years ago which re-created the Highland Jaunt (it might even have been called that) with Robby Coltrane as Dr J and John Sessions as Boswell.
It might be available on You-Tube. Everything else seems to be.
Hope that you are well and enjoying retirement.
Meant to tell you that I saw Michael Frayn and Claire Tomalin at an exhibition at the National Gallery last Summer - two days after the Brexit Disaster. I was too depressed to say hello.Oddly enough I had a collection of Frayn's Guardian articles in my pocket ( I like something sensational to read on the
train), quelle coincidence!
Have a good Easter, mon ami.

PS forget the above - Johnson and Boswell Tour of the Western Isles - (1993) - is on You Tube - Enjoy!!

>65 Foxhunter: Thanks for the tip, Foxhunter. Will try to have a look at it, even though I sometimes have some difficulties with spoken English...

You'll have even more trouble with the spoken Scottish 'English' - at least there are sub-titles

>64 Pepys: Did the tour ever happen? I might be persuaded to try it in summer 22!

I have read the Everymans Library edition of the Life of Samuel Johnson. It’s a delightful read, chatty, and a portrait not only of a man but a circle of people and an age. The issue is it’s length - it can become a bit tedious in parts as it’s such a long read and it obviously lacks the narrative drive of a comparably long novel. Dare I say it, but it probably would benefit from abridgement.

In the middle of Hebrides now and I have The Life in the mail. I would never have thought to seek out Boswell if not for this forum. Thank you!

I read The Life in 2018 and loved it. Have Hebrides on my shelf as a TBR.

>68 BionicJim: No, the tour never happened... Shame on me... But I still have it in mind...

I read the Life last year. As I said at the time, I'm glad to have read it and never plan to read it again.

Nice to review this old thread.

I've read Boswell's Johnson and Tour of the Hebrides. Recently bought FS Boswell's London Journal from Abe, TBR.