James Boswell

Born in Edinburgh in 1740, James Boswell was a Scottish lawyer, diarist, and author who is most widely remembered for Life of Samuel Johnson (1791). That book, based on years of close friendship, conversation, and note-taking, came to be regarded as one of the great biographies in English.

Boswell also wrote about his travels, including An Account of Corsica, and kept journals that showed him to be an unusually candid and energetic recorder of everyday life. Those papers, published long after his death, greatly expanded his reputation and helped readers see him not just as Johnson's admirer, but as a major writer in his own right.

He died in London in 1795. What still makes Boswell feel modern is the way he captures real voices, small details, and the messiness of personality, giving his work a sense of life that has lasted for centuries.