This volume, tenth in the Research Correspondence Series of the Yale Editions of the Private Papers of James Boswell, documents the long friendship between Boswell and Sir William Forbes This volume, tenth in the Research Correspondence Series of the Yale Editions of the Private Papers of James Boswell, collects the letters exchanged between lawyer, diarist, and biographer James Boswell and Sir William Forbes of Pitsligo, eminent Scottish banker, civic improver, philanthropist, literary and cultural patron, and lay leader of Edinburgh's "English Episcopal" community. Forbes served as Boswell's most valued Scottish advisor, to whom he would often turn for personal, financial, moral, and religious guidance, and whom he would name executor of his estate and co-guardian of his children. The volume includes a total of 111 comprehensively annotated letters, few of which have appeared previously in print, between Forbes and Boswell and other correspondents. It illuminates in particular the period in which Boswell moved from Edinburgh to London and wrote his major books, The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson and The Life of Samuel Johnson.

This Element documents the details and implications of Boswell's risky publication history. It argues that the success of the first edition of the Life of Samuel Johnson was the result not only of Boswell's biographical genius but also of collaboration with a devoted support network.

Samuel Johnson famously referred to his future biographer, the unsociable magistrate Sir John Hawkins, as “a most unclubbable man." Conversely, this celebratory volume gathers distinguished eighteenth-century studies scholars to honor the achievements, professional generosity, and sociability of Greg Clingham, taking as its theme textual and social group formations. Here, Philip Smallwood examines the “mirrored minds” of Johnson and Shakespeare, while David Hopkins parses intersections of the general and particular in three key eighteenth-century figures. Aaron Hanlon draws parallels between instances of physical rambling and rhetorical strategies in Johnson’s Rambler, while Cedric D. Reverand dissects the intertextual strands uniting Dryden and Pope. Contributors take up other topics significant to the field, including post-feminism, travel, and seismology. Whether discussing cultural exchange or textual reciprocities, each piece extends the theme, building on the trope of relationship to organize and express its findings. Rounding out this collection are tributes from Clingham’s former students and colleagues, including original poetry.

Social clubs as they existed in eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Scotland were varied: they could be convivial, sporting, or scholarly, or they could be a significant and dynamic social force, committed to improvement and national regeneration as well as to sociability. The essays in this volume examine the complex history of clubs and societies in Scotland from 1700 to 1830. Contributors address attitudes toward associations, their meeting places and rituals, their links with the growth of the professions and with literary culture, and the ways in which they were structured by both class and gender. By widening the context in which clubs and societies are set, the collection offers a new framework for understanding them, bringing together the inheritance of the Scottish past, the unique and cohesive polite culture of the Scottish Enlightenment, and the broader context of associational patterns common to Britain, Ireland, and beyond.

"Born in Edinburgh, the 'Athens of the North', a Scot who hated living in Scotland and nourished a lifelong love affair with London, Boswell was biographer, journalist, laird, advocate, social lion, incurable rake, lover, life of the party, traveller, steadfast friend, endearing charmer, exhibitionist fool, and drunken sot. In this moving biography, Peter Martin assesses Boswell's literary achievements and uncovers the pulsating and dynamic world he thrived in, from the royal courts and the drawing rooms of fashionable ladies and gentlemen to the fleshpots of London's unsavoury underworld and the chambers of the insane. He also poignantly reveals a man in agony, easily misunderstood, relentlessly plagued by hypochondria or melancholia, buffeted like a straw in the wind by a multitude of anxieties and 'horrible imaginings'."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved