Genius Fan

Portrait Summary

Subject: Frederick Albert Pottle, 03 August, 1897 – 16 May, 1987

• Frederick Pottle is the name most-associated with Yale University’s now legendary (I’m not overstating it!) Boswell publishing project. He studied Boswell in the 1920s, but it was in 1929, with the publication of a revised version of his doctoral thesis, The Literary Career of James Boswell, Esq, that his connection with the Scottish lawyer and writer really got started. He was already heading for a career in literary academia when in 1930 he took over editing and overseeing publication of the very first collection of James Boswell’s papers, following the untimely death of the original editor Geoffrey Scott (1884-1929). This was The Private Papers of James Boswell, from Malahide Castle, an archive assembled by the American collector Lt Col Ralph Heyward Isham. Between 1930 and 1934 he edited volumes 7-18. In 1944 he was appointed to the prestigious role of Sterling Professor of English at Yale, and was the obvious choice to lead the publication of what became the Yale Trade Editions of the Private Papers of James Boswell (after Yale University purchased nearly all relevant papers in 1949). He was sole editor of the Boswell’s London Journal 1762–1763 (1950), Boswell in Holland, 1763–1764 (1952) and Boswell on the Grand Tour: Germany and Switzerland, 1764 (1953). He was co-editor of the nine follow journals, but died before he could see the final journal to press – this was Boswell: The Great Biographer, 1789–1795, edited by Marlies K. Danziger and F Brady (1989)
• Photograph: This painting is made from a photograph taken in 1978, when Pottle was 81 years of age.
• Frederick A Pottle on Wikipedia