Facts and Inventions

James Boswell (1740-1795), best known as the biographer of Samuel Johnson, was also a lawyer, journalist, diarist and an insightful chronicler of a pivotal epoch in Western history. This selection of Boswell's journalistic writings offers a new angle on the history of journalism, and an original perspective on a complex literary personality.

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James Boswell (1740–1795), best known as the biographer of Samuel Johnson, was also a lawyer, journalist, diarist, and an insightful chronicler of a pivotal epoch in Western history. This fascinating collection, edited by Paul Tankard, presents a generous and varied selection of Boswell’s journalistic writings, most of which have not been published since the eighteenth century. It offers a new angle on the history of journalism, an idiosyncratic view of literature, politics, and public life in late eighteenth-century Britain, and an original perspective on a complex and engaging literary personality.