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A collection of essays first published in 1991 to commemorate the bicentenary of Boswell's Life of Johnson.
List of contents
Preface and acknowledgements; Abbreviations; Notes on contributors; Introduction: Boswell's ambiguity David Daiches; Part I. Boswell and Eighteenth-Century Scottish Culture: 1. Boswell and the rhetoric of friendship Thomas Crawford; 2. Scottish divines and legal lairds: Boswell's Scots presbyterian identity Richard B. Sher; 3. Boswell and the Scotticism Pat Rogers; 4. Boswell as man of letters Joan H. Pittock; Part II. Contexts for the Life of Johnson: 5. Boswell's liberty-loving Account of Corsica and the art of travel literature Thomas M. Curley; 6. Boswell and sympathy: the trial and execution of John Reid Gordon Turnbull; 7. Boswell and Hume: the deathbed interview Richard B. Swchwrtz; 8. 'This philosophical melancholy': style and self in Boswell and Hume Susan Manning; Part III. The Life of Johnson Reconsidered: 9. The originality of Boswell's version of Johnson's quarrel with Lord Chesterfield John J. Burke, Jr.; 10. Self-restraint and self-display in the authorial comments in the Life of Johnson Marlies K. Danziger; 11. The conversations in the Life of Johnson Paul J. Korshin; 12. Remembering the hero in Boswell's Life of Johnson Donna Heiland; 13. Truth and artifice in Boswell's Life of Johnson Greg Clingham; Index.
Summary
Boswell's Life of Johnson is established as one of the foremost literary biographies in the English language. This 1991 collection of essays, commemorating its bicentenary, investigates Boswell's achievements and limitations in both literary and personal contexts, and goes beyond the Life to examine the full range of Boswell's writings and interests.
