James Boswell was a Scottish biographer and diarist, who ranks as the greatest biographer in the history of Western literature.
Background
Boswell was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, on October 29, 1740, the eldest of the three sons of the advocate Alexander Boswell, Lord of Auchinleck in Ayrshire from 1749, and Euphemia Erskine Boswell. The Boswells were an old and well-connected family, having held the barony of Auchinleck since 1504 and having intermarried with the nobility.
As a child, Boswell was delicate and suffered from some type of nervous ailment.
Education
At 13 Boswell enrolled in the arts course at the University of Edinburgh, studying there from 1753 to 1758. In 1759 he matriculated at the University of Glasgow, continuing to prepare himself for a legal career. Boswell studied law at home until he passed his trials in civil law in July 1762, spending part of his free time scribbling verse that showed little merit.
In 1760 Boswell ran away to London, where the Earl of Eglinton introduced him to his circle of friends, including Laurence Sterne. Dazzled by metropolitan culture and by women, Boswell determined to remain permanently in the capital by obtaining a commission in the Foot Guards. Lord Auchinleck fetched Boswell home in June 1760, thereby beginning a 3-year struggle with his son, who by now was in open rebellion. Still stubborn in his London plans, he worked out a compromise with his father whereby the elder Boswell agreed to supplement his annuity and to permit him to seek a guards commission in London. Boswell, in anticipation of this trip, began in the fall of 1762 his journal. His generousness of mind enabled him to elicit memorable conversation from those he met, and he dramatically reported it in his journal.
Boswell's second London visit lasted from November 1762 to August 1763. During this period he met both Oliver Goldsmith and John Wilkes, and on May 16, 1793, he received an unexpected introduction to Samuel Johnson, whose works he greatly admired, in a bookseller's back parlor. He called on Johnson a week later, and their friendship was cemented.
Soon Boswell, convinced he could not obtain a guards commission, gave in to his father's desire for him to become a lawyer. He agreed to spend the winter studying civil law at Utrecht, Holland. Johnson made a 4-day journey to Harwich to see Boswell off to Holland. After a year of study in Utrecht, Boswell embarked on a grand tour (1764-1766).
In Switzerland he obtained interviews with both Jean Jacques Rousseau and Voltaire. Boswell spent 9 months sight-seeing in Italy, and in the autumn of 1765 made a 6 weeks' tour of Corsica in order to interview Pasquale Paoli, the Corsican leader who was attempting to secure the island's freedom from Genoa. He and Paoli became lifelong friends, and Boswell's Corsican visit later provided the basis for his first important publication.
Boswell received admission to the faculty of advocates of the Scottish bar on July 26, 1766. For the next 17 years he successfully practiced law in Edinburgh, making as he said a better lawyer than could have been expected from one "pressed into service." Until 1784 his cherished trips to London were made only during vacations and not, to his regret, annually.
In 1768 Boswell published An Account of Corsica, the Journal of a Tour to That Island, and Memoirs of Pascal Paoli, the first of his works to be based on his journal. In August-November 1773 he made his famous tour of the Hebrides with Dr. Johnson. By 1776, however, Boswell had begun to have intimations of failure - he had failed a government position, his practice had not become more notable, and he had returned to heavy drinking and to whoring.
Between 1777 and 1783 Boswell contributed a series of 70 essays to the London Magazine under the title of "The Hypochondriack." His succession to Auchinleck in 1782, following his father's death, made Boswell an important man in Ayrshire and encouraged him to concentrate upon a political career. Unsuccessful in his application to several ministries, he finally pinned his hopes on William Pitt the Younger and Henry Dundas, the political manager of Scotland. His well-received pamphlet attacking Charles James Fox's East India Bill, A Letter to the People of Scotland, issued in 1783, did not gain him political preferment, however, and so in a second pamphlet, with the same title, published in 1785, Boswell turned against Dundas. By alienating him, Boswell blocked any hope of a political career in Scotland. He decided to devote sufficient time toward writing an adequate biography. He also decided to publish his journal of their Hebridean tour as its first installment.
Accordingly, he went to London in the spring of 1785 to see his Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides through the press. This revised version of his original journal, coming from the happiest period of Boswell's life and recording 101 days spent with Johnson, probably excels all the other parts of his journal. The book achieved a great success, but it also provoked the charge of personal fatuity that has attached to Boswell's name since.
His failure as a lawyer and as a political aspirant; his quarrel with the Earl of Lonsdale, which forced him to resign the recordership of Carlisle in 1790; his straitened financial circumstances; and his encumbrance with debts caused by the maintenance and education of his five children - all these furnished a somber backdrop to his labors of writing, revising, and completing the greatest of all biographies.
The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL. D. was published on May 16, 1791, in a two-volume quarto edition of about 1, 750 copies to immediate success and to critical acclaim for the work and derision for its author. Boswell enjoyed his fame, but he still wished for "creditable employment." His last years were prevailingly unhappy, and he became a heavy drinker.
Boswell saw the second edition of his Life through the press in July 1793 and was overseeing the third edition when he died in London after a sudden illness on May 19, 1795.
Boswell was present at the meeting of the Committee for the Abolition of the Slave Trade in May 1787 set up to persuade William Wilberforce to lead the abolition movement in Parliament. However, the abolitionist Thomas Clarkson records that by 1788 Boswell "after having supported the cause . .. became inimical to it."
His most prominent display of support for slavery was his 1791 poem "No Abolition of Slavery; or the Universal Empire of Love."
Personality
Boswell appeared to his contemporaries as an intelligent, cultured, and congenial man, distinguished by the generosity of his spirit. Pride in his family and a desire for advancement were his ruling passions, but of almost equal importance were his social adaptability, good nature, passion for publicity, and compulsion to record all his activities. Boswell's frankness about his habits has led to an exaggerated emphasis on his instability of character, particularly on his drinking and whoring.
Physical Characteristics:
Boswell had swarthy skin, black hair, and dark eyes; he was of average height, and he tended to plumpness. His appearance was alert and masculine, and he had an ingratiating sense of good humor.
Connections
Boswell married his cousin, Margaret Montgomerie, in November 1769. She remained faithful to Boswell, despite his frequent liaisons with prostitutes, until her death from tuberculosis in 1789. James and Margaret had four sons and three daughters. Two sons died in infancy. Boswell also had at least two extramarital children.