James Boswell

Marshall Waingrow's opus magnum is not a corrected edition of the printed text of Boswell's Life of Johnson. Rather, Waingrow presents an edition of the manuscript which enables us to follow Boswell's compositional process through successive revisions.

The Correspondence of James Boswell with James Bruce and Andrew Gibb, Overseers of the Auchinleck Estate

The General Correspondence of James Boswell, 1766-1769

These letters chart the friendship between Boswell and the man he called his "most intimate friend", William Johnson Temple. Covering the period from Boswell and Temple's student days at Edinburgh University until their mid-30s, the dialogue reveals the two men's thoughts on their families, ambitions, sex-life and friendship. Each is the other's "brother confessor" and the letters provide glimpses into Boswell's personality and the subjective life of an 18th-century country parson.

It's 1778, Boswell is now aproaching his 40th birthday, married with three young children and a fourth on its way. His father, the laird of Auchinleck, is ill and dying. Boswell himself is full of both the doubts of middle age and the pleasures of family life. Far removed from the rakish, scholarly and amorous adventures described in earlier journals, "Boswell, Laird of Auchinleck" records Boswell's daily trials and incidents as he struggles to manage the family estate of Auchinleck in Ayrshire. Full of momentary detail and flashes of self-knowledge, Boswell's journal is an insight into the mind of the mature diarist.

This is the first of two volumes containing Boswell's correspondence with more than 200 people, including Pitt, Rousseau, Paoli, John Wilkes, Sir Alexander Dick, Baretti and numerous women friends. The letters date from a three year period between 1766, when Boswell returned from his Grand Tour, to 1769, and his marriage to his cousin Margaret Montgomerie. They show Boswell in the happiest days of his life as the law student became a practising advocate, the literary hopeful a best-selling author, the pursuer of rich heiresses a family man, and the dreamer a landowner as the Laird of Dalblair. The letters to and from his correspondents are reprinted in full, with extensive explanatory notes.

The most celebrated English biography is a group portrait in which extraordinary man paints the picture of a dozen more. At the centre of a brilliant circle which included Burke, Reynolds, Garrick, Fanny Burney and even George III, Boswell captures the powerful, troubled and witty figure of Samuel Johnson, who towers above them all. Yet this is also an intimate picture of domestic life, which mingles the greatest talkers of a talkative age with the hero's humbler friends in a picture which is, before all things, humane. This is a new, corrected, rest and reprinted edition. At 14. 99 for the complete edition of the Life in 1344 pages, it compares with Penguin's abridged edition of just 300 pages of text at 6. 99 and OUP's World Classics unabridged edition printed on newsprint at 10. 99.

Book by Samuel Johnson, published in 1775. The Journey was the result of a three-month trip to Scotland that Johnson took with James Boswell in 1773. It contains Johnson's descriptions of the customs, religion, education, trade, and agriculture of a society that was new to him. The account in Boswell's diary, published after Johnson's death as The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, with Samuel Johnson, LL. D. (1785), offers an intimate personal record of Johnson's behavior and conversation during the trip.

"When a man is tired of London he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford." -Samuel Johnson, The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791)The Life of Samuel Johnson, Volume II (1791) stands as one of the greatest biographies published, documenting the life of arguably the most influential writer of the 18th century. Johnson was a poet, essayist, and biographer, but most notably, the writer of the first dictionary in the English language. Boswell's work provides much of what is known about the life of Johnson. This second volume of the 1905 edition features Johnson's personal accounts of his travels to North Wales and Hebrides, Scotland. It also details the many conversations between Johnson and his much younger friend, Boswell. The book is replete with Johnson's well-known witticisms and is a must-read for lovers of literature and history.

"When a man writes from his own mind, he writes very rapidly. The greatest part of a writer's time is spent in reading, in order to write; a man will turn over half a library to make one book." -Samuel Johnson, The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791)The Life of Samuel Johnson, Volume I (1791) stands as one of the greatest biographies published, documenting the life of arguably the most influential writer of the 18th century. Johnson was a poet, essayist, and biographer, but most notably, the writer of the first dictionary in the English language. Boswell's work provides much of what is known about the life of Johnson. This first volume of the 1905 edition focuses on Johnson's early life as well as the many conversations between Johnson and his much younger friend, Boswell. The book is replete with Johnson's well-known quotes and is a must-read for lovers of literature and history.