Boswell ‘s London Journal

Sinopse

1762-1763
In 1762 James Boswell, then only twenty-two years old, left Edinburgh to travel to London. The journal he kept during the next nine months was published for the first time in 1950, in an edition prepared by Frederick Pottle. The Journal is an intimate account of Boswell’s experiences of London’s high-life and low-life. In it he tells of his struggles for independence from his family, and for self-preservation; he talks about his developing friendship with Samuel Johnson; he describes the taverns, playhouses and coffee houses he frequented; and he reports the conversations he had with figures such as the poet James MacPherson and the actor David Garrick.
The Journal is frank and confessional in tone and reveals much about its young author, the future biographer of Johnson. At the same time, Boswell’s shrewd self-analyses and internal anxieties are set against a vivid and exhilarating portrait of eighteenth-century London.