James Boswell

Born in Edinburgh in 1740, James Boswell was a Scottish lawyer, diarist, and man of letters. He is remembered above all for his close friendship with Samuel Johnson and for the remarkable notes and journals that preserved Johnson's conversation in rich detail.

Boswell traveled widely, wrote about Corsica, and kept extensive personal journals that revealed both his curiosity and his inner conflicts. That habit of close observation helped make his most famous book, The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), a landmark work often praised as one of the great biographies in English.

He died in 1795, but his reputation grew even more strongly after later publication of his journals. Today he is valued not only as Johnson's biographer, but also as a sharp, candid recorder of 18th-century literary and social life.