Boswell the Biographer

Lord Auchinleck died in 1782. His relations with Boswell are of some interest in this place, because they exhibit Boswell in the _rôle_ of son and incidentally raise an importan...

Four years of life remained to Boswell after the publication of the great biography. His death came at the due moment; he was not cut off in the midst of a great undertaking or...

Boswell's 'Life of Johnson' is, as we all know, a unique biography; it has no rival. Its unchallenged supremacy has a special significance from the position which Johnson himsel...

The portion of Boswell's career which we have been relating up to this point gives rise by natural sequence to the discussion of one or two interesting questions about his perso...

A biography of Boswell, though it might profess to be complete, could say little about his domestic life. If he has told us very little about it, there is, however, no reason th...

'The accident,' says Professor Raleigh,[1] 'which gave Boswell to Johnson and Johnson to Boswell is one of the most extraordinary pieces of good fortune in literary history.' Th...

Biography is by its nature historical and suited to an historical method. The history of an institution is written in respect of its functions. The Christian Church, for instanc...

Nothing in Boswell's life became him so well as his second important publication, 'The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides.' The event took place in 1785, not many months after Jo...

The method we have been examining has revealed, in a sense, a second aspect of Boswell as the biographer, the natural complement of that scientific spirit which inspired the acu...

It is remarkable, as we have observed, in view of his personal animosities, and of his determination to prove Dr. Johnson to be both a greater and a better man than would appear...

To understand what he meant by this, an attitude perhaps not only towards himself, but to the public also, since he wished very much that those who read his book should feel tha...

The biographer had gradually during the life of Johnson relaxed his efforts in collecting material for the _magnum opus_; we can see in the 'Life' how he grew less industrious i...

Dr. Johnson has been considered, and very properly considered, a great talker. Not the least of our reasons for reading the 'Life' is that we are interested to know what Johnson...