Boswell hume biography

Discovery of the Papers 

For about 150 years after his death, James Boswell (1740–1795) was widely known as an eccentric Scottish gentleman lawyer who happened to write the Life of Samuel Johnson, LLD (first edition 1791), one of the supreme achievements in biography, and The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, with Samuel Johnson, LLD (1785), an unusual and compelling travel book. The significance of those works remains undiminished today.  Our portrait of Boswell and our sense of his significance, however, have undergone a major transformation.

It had been known that Boswell left behind a large collection of letters and journals, but these were thought to have been destroyed. In 1807, Boswell’s friend and editor Edmond Malone mentioned in a footnote in the fifth edition of the Life—one letter in particular having been “burned in a mass of papers in Scotland”—and nobody even attempted to recover the papers until Dr. George Birkbeck Hill, in the 1880s, went to Auchinleck to retrieve the proof-sheets of the Life of Johnson in preparation of his edition of that work. But even he reported no other papers, and when some of Boswell’s library was auctioned off at Sotheby’s in 1893, there was no mention of any correspondence or journals.

In the 1920s and 1930s, the scholarly world learned that James Boswell’s considerable archives had survived and were, as it happened, unceremoniously packed away in the haylofts and croquet boxes of his descendants at Malahide Castle in Ireland and Fettercairn House in Scotland. The process of persuading Boswell’s descendants to part with the papers and then assembling them into one collection was the achievement of the intrepid American collector Ralph Heyward  Isham. Colonel Isham’s mission, costly and often frustrating, would take the better part of two decades to complete. In 1949 the Boswell collection was acquired by Yale University. In the next half-century, Colonel Isham

Scottish lawyer, diarist and author (1740–1795)

This article is about the 18th-century writer. For other persons of the same name, see James Boswell (disambiguation).

James Boswell, 9th Laird of Auchinleck (; 29 October 1740 (N.S.) – 19 May 1795), was a Scottish biographer, diarist, and lawyer, born in Edinburgh. He is best known for his biography of the English writer Samuel Johnson, Life of Samuel Johnson, which is commonly said to be the greatest biography written in the English language. A great mass of Boswell's diaries, letters, and private papers were recovered from the 1920s to the 1950s, and their publication by Yale University has transformed his reputation.

Early life

Boswell was born in Blair's Land on the east side of Parliament Close behind St Giles' Cathedral in Edinburgh on 29 October 1740 (N.S.). He was the eldest son of a judge, Alexander Boswell, Lord Auchinleck, and his wife Euphemia Erskine. As the eldest son, he was heir to his family's estate of Auchinleck in Ayrshire. Boswell's mother was a strict Calvinist, and he felt that his father was cold to him. As a child, he was delicate. Kay Jamison, Professor of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins, in her book Touched with Fire, believes that Boswell may have suffered from bipolar disorder, and this condition would afflict him sporadically all through his life. At the age of five, he was sent to James Mundell's academy, an advanced institution by the standards of the time, where he was instructed in English, Latin, writing and arithmetic.

The eight-year-old Boswell was unhappy there, and suffered from nightmares and extreme shyness. Consequently, he was removed from the academy and educated by a string of private tutors. The most notable and supportive of these, John Dunn, exposed Boswell to modern literature, such as The Spectator essays, and religion. Dunn was also present during Boswell's serious afflic

Boswell first met Hume in Edinburgh in July 1758, apparently with an introductory letter (or something like that) from William Temple. In a letter to Temple of July 29, 1758, Boswell wrote "Some days ago I was introduced to your friend Mr. Hume; he is a most discreet, affable man as ever I met with, and has really a great deal of learning, and a choice collection of books. He is indeed an extraordinary man, few such people are to be met with nowadays. We talk a great deal of genius, fine language, improving our style, %c., but I am afraid, solid learning is much wore out. Mr Hume, I think, is a very proper person for a young man to cultivate an acquaintance with; though he has not, perhaps, the most delicate taste, yet he has apply'd himself with great attention to the study of the ancients, and is likewise a great historian, so that you are not only entertained in his company, but may reap a great deal of usefull instruction. I own myself much obliged to you, dear Sir, for procuring me the pleasure of his acquaintance."

On November 4, 1762, Boswell and Erskine went to see Hume in Edinburgh. The description of the ensuing conversation in the journal of his harvest jaunt that same fall, seems to be one of his first attempts to write down the details of particular conversations, as he later did when in the company of Dr. Johnson and others. The conversation hit upon literary subjects such as David Mallet, Tobias Smollet, Tristram Shandy (by Laurence Sterne), Fingal (written or collected by James Macpherson) and Lord Kames.

On February 18, 1763, Boswell sent Hume a letter, telling Hume about the trick played upon him by Andrew Erskine and George Dempster, and inquiring whether Hume would be interested in corresponding with him. On February 28 he received an answer from Hume, who complained that Boswell and Erskine had quoted a part of the private conversation they'd had with Hume on November 4, 1762, in their Critical Strictures on the New T