Boswell << BOZ wehl >>, James (1740-1795), was a Scottish author who wrote what is probably the most brilliant biography in the English language, The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791). Although his fame rests chiefly on his association with Johnson, the greatest English writer of the time, Boswell revealed his fascinating personality in many other writings. His lively private journals record his most intimate thoughts and experiences. In astonishing detail, the journals describe the contradictory character of Boswell—lively and moody, lustful and devout, vain and affectionate.
Boswell was born on Oct. 29, 1740, in Edinburgh. His father was a distinguished judge who wanted his son to work in the law. But Boswell’s ambition was to win fame as an author and to move in the society of great men. In 1763, in a small London bookshop, Boswell met Johnson. Between 1763 and 1766, Boswell traveled in Europe and met the great French writers Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. He also met the Corsican patriot Pasquale Paoli, and enthusiastically supported Corsica’s fight for independence from the republic of Genoa. Boswell’s Account of Corsica (1768) made him famous.
Boswell began to practice law in Edinburgh in 1766, but the lure of London and Johnson’s stimulating company prompted frequent visits. In 1773, he invited Johnson on a tour of the Hebrides Islands of Scotland. Boswell’s Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides (1785) is a colorful account of their trip.
After Johnson died in 1784, Boswell, assisted by the great scholar Edmond Malone, began the difficult task of writing his friend’s biography. Boswell probably had decided to undertake this project soon after he met Johnson. During the many years of their friendship, he had tirelessly collected materials on Johnson’s life, filling his journals with authentic transcriptions of Johnson’s conversations. This diligence—and Boswell’s skill in transforming the various incidents of Johnson’s life into a unified work of art—resulted in a new type of vivid biography. Boswell did not merely record facts and dates, and he did not conceal the blemishes of his friend’s character to glorify him. He followed Johnson’s belief—that through biography, readers may learn by example how to copy the virtues and avoid the follies of even the greatest people.
Boswell’s supreme achievement was to bring Johnson to life, allowing him to speak for himself in his letters and his conversation. Thanks to Boswell’s memory, his sense of the dramatic, and his keen ear for intonations, Johnson and his words are, as Boswell had hoped, “almost entirely preserved.” Boswell died on May 19, 1795.
