James Boswell is important for several reasons. His biography of Samuel Johnson is undoubtedly his most celebrated work, and for it he has traditionally been assigned pride of place among biographers. The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. (1791) is often...

James Boswell's impact on the development of biography as a genre and on the understanding of the requirements for good biographical writing can hardly be overstated. The discovery of Boswell's journals has not only enhanced his reputation as one of...

The Scottish biographer and diarist James Boswell (1740-1795), who wrote The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D., published in 1791, ranks as the greatest biographer in the history of Western literature. His private papers also reveal "Bozzie" as a most...

There are islands in the Hebrides and Orkneys where only one man lives, an island unto himself and maybe a thousand sheep. And there are others with no one in residence at all, but wild...

In the essay that follows, Bell considers Boswell's London Journal to be a groundbreaking work in the development of the first-person factual narrative. He commends in particular Boswell's use of personal experience as a means of establishing his literary persona.

In the following introduction to a collection of essays about Boswell as a biographer, Daiches describes the paradoxes between Boswell's life and character, and his literary style and portrayal of himself.