James Boswell

Blessington shows remarkable flair for rendering conversation convincingly. Her descriptions, too, especially the account of Byron's appearance with which she opens her work, carry conviction by apparently rendering the observer in the very act of...

EC 's work, An Examination of Mr. Pope's Essay on Man, translated Crousaz' Examen; A Commentary on Mr. Pope's Principles of Morality, or Essay on Man, by Johnson, 1739, translated Crousaz' second...

The young James Boswell heard Frances and Thomas Sheridan read her play The Discovery aloud at their home in Windsor, their voices alternating.

Boswell loved the play and was highly flattered by an invitation to supply a prologue. In fact he wrote two successive prologues for it, of which, however, the first was turned down by the author...

When Boswell read the elegy On the Death of Stephen Gray , F. R. S., The Author of the Present Doctrine of Electricity, he at once suspected it was by Johnson . Williams stoutly...

She said she wanted to puncture the prevailing mood of adulation, but chose anonymity so as not to pain Johnson's step-daughter Lucy Porter . The following year she supplied materials to Boswell for his biography...

SJ dictated to Boswell his legal opinion in the case of Joseph Knight , a slave suing in Scotland for his liberty: he concluded, No man is by nature the property of another: The defendant...

While apparently received enthusiastically in America, this book had a more mixed reception in Britain. A long review in the Athenæum began by describing CMS as clear of affectation to the extent of being...

For this her great support and encouragement was her brother (as he, rather than her husband , continued to be for her later publications). After he left home to pursue his studies, she sent him...

Her title comes from an anecdote in Boswell 's The Life of Samuel Johnson, about a man who tried to be a philosopher, but could not manage it because cheerfulness kept breaking in.

Most . . . but not all of FR 's Recollections of Dr. Johnson was printed by John Wilson Croker in his edition of Boswell 's Life of Samuel Johnson, as one...

James Boswell drafted for CLProposals for Publishing a New and Improved Edition of Shakspeare Illustrated; this edition was never completed.

These letters were calculated to contribute to Steuart 's projected but never written book on Jacobite attempts on the throne between the Glorious Revolution and the Rebellion of 1745. They include some comment on women's...

This book is sometimes called a memoir, but its autobiographical moments are only incidental. MJ 's attention is mostly directed towards books and reading; her own experiences of writing, publishing, and having her works performed...

Zoe reflects GJ 's own lifelong spiritual crisis.Susanne Howe notes that it anticipates later novels by Mary Augusta Ward and J. A. Froude , which also deal with spiritual doubt. Beginning in...