The Heart Of Boswell Author:James Boswell Here are generous selections from the first six volumes of the Yale Edition of the journals of James Boswell arranged into a unique, fast-moving narrative portrait of a remarkable man and his times. Beginning with the twenty-two-year-old Boswell's arrival in London from his native Scotland, this distillation of the celebrated journals takes ... more »the reader along as Boswell begins his lifelong association with Samuel Johnson, travels to Holland to study law, goes on a Grand Tour of the Continent (meeting Rousseau and Voltaire among others), then returns to a life of shuttling between London and Edinburgh as he finds a wife and tries to settle down into a law career.
Crowded with sights, sounds, smells, foibles, witticisms and touching on the social and political issues that unsettled Britain on the eve of the War of American Independence, Boswell's journals have an unprecedented candor and an enduring appeal. As Esquire magazine noted in reviewing The Heart of Boswell: "Boswell was one of the most self-enchanted creatures ever to tread earth: his narcissistic dash helps explain why 186 years later he still cuts so modern a figure." His unerring eye and ear and attention to the concrete detail and nuance of street and salon, of coffeehouse and theater lobby -- in such contrast to the rhetoric of the published discourse of his day (including his own venerated Life of Johnson) -- all make Boswell's journals one of the great treasures of the English language. « less