James Boswell

Family pride and the desire for literary company shape W. Keith Leask's biography of James Boswell. It begins with the Boswell family's connections and the influence of Lord Auchinleck, James's father, a judge whose library held classical manuscripts and rare editions. The chapter headings follow Boswell through continental travel, his legal career, Edinburgh life and a tour of the Hebrides. Leask uses letters and a boyhood commonplace book to reconsider the man behind the Life of Johnson.

Boswell's anxious wait for election to the Literary Club gives a closer view of his relations with other writers. Johnson proposes him, and news of his acceptance sends him hurrying to the meeting, where he encounters Burke for the first time. Leask argues that Boswell's accounts helped preserve the club's reputation. Readers interested in eighteenth-century literary society will find a biography concerned with both personal ambition and the later judgments made about a writer's work.