James Boswell

The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, Ll.d. (Dodo Press) James Boswell

James Boswell, 9th Laird of Auchinleck and 1st Baronet (1740-1795) was a lawyer, diarist, and author born in Edinburgh, Scotland. His name has passed into the English language as a term (Boswell, Boswellian, Boswellism) for a constant companion and observer. He is best known as Samuel Johnson's biographer, and is also known for the detailed and frank journals that he wrote for long periods of his life, which remained undiscovered until the 1920s. These included voluminous notes on the grand tour of Europe that he took as a young nobleman and, subsequently, of his tour of Scotland with Johnson. When The Life of Samuel Johnson was published in 1791 it at once commanded the admiration that Boswell had sought for so long, and it has suffered no diminution since. Its style was revolutionary - unlike other biographies of that era it directly incorporated conversations that Boswell had noted down at the time for his journals. In addition to his journals and major biography, Boswell also wrote a prominent display of support for the slavery movement: No Abolition of Slavery; or, The Universal Empire of Love (1791).