Boswell Without Johnson?

It was in 1925 that the literary time bombs Boswell left behind him started going off in the trunks, attics, stables and croquet boxes of his descendants’ castle in Ireland, and in the home of his executor’s descendants in Scotland. (Some earlier letters, passed down by another executor, had been found in Boulogne during the nineteenth century.) Since then new discoveries, new detonations, have surprised the scholarly world and, after the customary lag, delighted the general reading audience. “Dr. Watson’s Indiscretions.”

And so we had the “trade edition” of Boswell’s journals—presently up to its eighth volume. Now, with the letters to John Johnston of Grange another Pegasean freight service heaves itself aloft —the scholarly edition of his papers, which will fill over forty volumes. Simultaneously, across a sky already dark with Boswell books, the first volume of a massive biography lumbers into view. Prompting the questions: Is he worth it? How is Boswell standing up, apart from Johnson?

GW

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Garry Wills

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It was in 1925 that the literary time bombs Boswell left behind him started going off in the trunks, attics, stables and croquet boxes of his descendants’ castle in Ireland, and in the home of his executor’s descendants in Scotland. (Some earlier letters, passed down by another executor, had been found in Boulogne during the nineteenth century.) Since then new discoveries, new detonations, have surprised the scholarly world and, after the customary lag, delighted the general reading audience. “Dr. Watson’s Indiscretions.”

And so we had the “trade edition” of Boswell’s journals—presently up to its eighth volume. Now, with the letters to John Johnston of Grange another Pegasean freight service heaves itself aloft —the scholarly edition of his papers, which will fill over forty volumes. Simultaneously, across a sky already dark with Boswell books, the first volume of a massive biography lumbers into view. Prompting the questions: Is he worth it? How is Boswell standing up, apart from Johnson?