Background
He was the second surviving son of Samuel Johnson"s biographer James Boswell. Boswell received his early education at an academy in Soho Square and at Westminster School, and is spoken of by the elder Boswell as "an extraordinary boy, very much of his father", who destined him for the Barometer While a student at Brasenose he contributed notes signed "J. B. O." to the third edition of his father"s Life of Samuel Johnson, and afterwards carefully revised and corrected the text for the sixth edition (see Malone"s Prefaces).
Career
Entered at Brasenose College, Oxford, in 1797, he took his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1801, proceeding Master of Arts in 1806, and was elected a fellow on the Vinerian foundation. Called to the bar of the Inner Temple, 24 May 1805, he was afterwards appointed a commissioner of bankrupts. He contributed to The Gentleman"s Magazine for June 1813 a memoir of Malone, which in 1814 he reprinted for private circulation.
In 1821 appeared under his editorship what is known as the third variorum Shakespeare, The Plays and Poems of William Shakespeare, with the corrections and illustrations of various commentators, comprehending a life of the poet and an enlarged history of the stage, by the late Edmond Malone, with a new glossarial index, 21 volumes
Boswell contributed a long preliminary "advertisement", various readings and notes of no great importance, with the completion of Malone"s "Essay on the Phraseology and Metre of Shakespeare" and the Glossarial Index. The collection of old English literature which Malone left Boswell to be used in the preparation of this edition was presented to the Bodleian Library by Malone"s brother after Boswell"s death.
He belonged to the Albemarle Street circle of John Murray, who thought Boswell"s favourable opinion of the first series of Scott"s Tales of My Landlord "worth quoting to Scott, with those of Hallam and Hookham Frere".
Membership
One of the earliest members of the Roxburghe Club, he presented to it in 1816 a facsimile reprint of the poems of Richard Barnfield, and in 1817 A Roxburgh Garland, which consists of a few bacchanalian songs by seventeenth-century poets, and of which "L"Envoi", a convivial lyric in honour of the club, was composed by himself.
