Boswell, James (1740–1795)

Scottish biographer and diarist. He was a member of Samuel Johnson's Literary Club and the two men travelled to Scotland together in 1773, as recorded in Boswell's Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides (1785). His Life of Samuel Johnson was published in 1791. Boswell's ability to record Johnson's pithy conversation verbatim makes this a classic of English biography.

Boswell was born in Edinburgh. He qualified as a lawyer in 1766 but centred his ambitions on literature and politics. He first met Johnson in 1763, and following a European tour, established a place in his intimate circle, becoming a member of the Literary Club in 1773. On his succession to his father's estate in 1782, Boswell made further attempts to enter Parliament, qualified to practise as a barrister in England in 1786, and was recorder of Carlisle from 1788–90. In 1789 he settled in London.

During his European tour he met the French thinkers Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Voltaire, and the Corsican nationalist general Pasquale de Paoli (1726–1807), whom he commemorated in his popular An Account of Corsica (1768). Boswell's long-lost personal papers were acquired for publication by Yale University in 1949, and the Journals are of exceptional interest.