In 1773, Boswell enticed his famous English friend Samuel Johnson to accompany him on a tour through the highlands and western islands of Scotland. Johnson was then in his mid sixties.
The two travellers set out from Edinburgh and skirted the eastern and northeastern coasts of Scotland, passing through St Andrews, Aberdeen and Inverness. They then passed into the highlands and spent several weeks on various islands in the Hebrides, including Skye, Coll, and Mull. After a visit to Boswell's estate at Auchinleck, the travellers returned to Edinburgh. Also available in audio, Johnson published his Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland on 18 January 1775.
Between the years of 1762 and 1763, James Boswell kept a journal of his time in London. During his time, he met the renowned writer, moralist, and lexicographer Samuel Johnson, with whom Boswell would form a close relationship. This account, told with much detail and candor, was one of the various journals written by Boswell, but it is the journal that has undergone the least amount of censorship, leading it, and the racy material within, to be deemed a bestseller upon publication.
In 1762, 22-year old James Boswell left Edinburg for London. This portion of his personal journals documents the nine months that followed. Filled with detail, description, and zest for life, Boswell's London Journal provides a frank and accurate picture of both the young man and London in the early 1760s. While many of Boswell's journals have been published, this one gained popularity for its racier entries as well as its descriptions of Boswell's first encounter with Samuel Johnson, who would later be the subject of his most famous written work, the biography Life of Johnson. This audiobook contains a wonderful reading by the talented Sir Anthony Quale.
Dramatisation by Robin Brooks of James Boswell's biography of Samuel Johnson, to celebrate the 300th anniversary of Johnson's birth. Episode 1: Young Boswell comes to London to seek out his hero. He wants to write a biography of the great man 'in scenes', with Johnson's conversation cast as dialogue. Nothing quite like this has ever been attempted before.Episode 2: Boswell visits Johnson only intermittently, but relies on him more and more. Johnson meets Hester Thrale, who becomes his devoted friend and confidante, and the most important person in his life. Starring Kenneth Cranham and full cast. Directed by Claire Grove.
James Boswell forever changed the genre of biography when he painstakingly transformed a scholarly profusion of detail into a perceptive, lifelike portrait of Dr. Samuel Johnson.
James Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson reveals a man of outsized appetites and private vulnerabilities and is the source of much of what we know about one of the towering figures of English literature. Boswell spent a great deal of time with Johnson in his final years and from his scrupulously accurate memory and copious journal was able to faithfully record the brilliance and wit of Dr. Johnson's conversation. Boswell's aim and achievement was completeness; no detail was too small for him. On this point Dr. Johnson remarked to him, 'There is nothing, sir, too little for so little a creature as man.' Boswell's thirst for detail makes this indisputably the finest of many biographies of Johnson.
This biography gained its unique place in literary history from the fact that its style was revolutionary. The usual style of biographers of that era was to record dry facts from the subject's public life only. Boswell differed by incorporating actual conversations of Dr. Johnson, which Boswell had previously noted down in journals, and by including many more details of personal life. The result revolutionized the genre.
For both its subject and its style, The Life of Samuel Johnson is still popular with modern critics and students of the history of English thought and of English literature.
'The most famous single work of biographical art in the whole of literature.''Walter Jackson Bate, American literary critic and biographer
Boswell's biography of his friend and hero Samuel Johnson is an acknowledged classic, full of humorous anecdote and rich characterisation. Johnson's complex humanity (his depression, fear of death, intellectual brilliance and rough humour) is set within a vivid picture of eighteenth-century London, peopled by personalities of the time such as Sir Joshua Reynolds, John Wilkes, Oliver Goldsmith and David Garrick.
The literary critic Samuel Johnson was 54 when he first encountered James Boswell; the friendship that developed spawned one of the greatest biographies in the history of world literature. The book is full of humorous anecdote and rich characterization, and paints a vivid picture of 18th-century London, peopled by prominent personalities of the time such as Sir Joshua Reynolds, John Wilkes, Oliver Goldsmith and David Garrick. It also gives insight into Johnson's depression, fear of death, intellectual brilliance and rough humour.
James Boswell forever changed the genre of biography when he painstakingly transformed a scholarly profusion of detail into a perceptive, lifelike portrait of Dr. Samuel Johnson.
James Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson reveals a man of outsized appetites and private vulnerabilities and is the source of much of what we know about one of the towering figures of English literature. Boswell spent a great deal of time with Johnson in his final years and from his scrupulously accurate memory and copious journal was able to faithfully record the brilliance and wit of Dr. Johnson's conversation. Boswell's aim and achievement was completeness; no detail was too small for him. On this point Dr. Johnson remarked to him, "There is nothing, sir, too little for so little a creature as man." Boswell's thirst for detail makes this indisputably the finest of many biographies of Johnson.
This biography gained its unique place in literary history from the fact that its style was revolutionary. The usual style of biographers of that era was to record dry facts from the subject's public life only. Boswell differed by incorporating actual conversations of Dr. Johnson, which Boswell had previously noted down in journals, and by including many more details of personal life. The result revolutionized the genre.
For both its subject and its style, The Life of Samuel Johnson is still popular with modern critics and students of the history of English thought and of English literature.
In 1773, an unlikely pair-a dominant figure of English literature and a young lawyer-set out on horseback to follow roads and cattle-trails across the Highlands to the Western Islands of Scotland. Their conversation and accounts are filled with curious detail, flashing wit and fascinating encounters with the high and low of the country.
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