Category: Books
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The Rambler Challenge: Six Months to Read 18th Century Prose
Samuel Johnson’s Rambler essays are notoriously dense – 18th-century prose thick with Latinate vocabulary and elaborate sentence structure. Here’s what happened when I tried reading one for the first time: why they’re so difficult, what makes Johnson’s style unique, and the six-month challenge I’ve set myself to finally read one…
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James Boswell Reading List: Where to Start and What to Read Next
James Boswell – Eighteenth-century diarist and biographer of Samuel Johnson – deserves more readers. This post sorts his vast body of work into five stages, from Bitten (curious beginners) to Boswellevated (obsessive collectors), so you can find exactly where to start, what to read next, and how deep you want…
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Stanley Curnow: The Mystery Contributor to the Boswell Factory – A Self-Taught Scholar from Johannesburg
A Johannesburg tax accountant with no academic credentials wrote to Yale in 1957 and ended up editing James Boswell’s private papers. Frederick Pottle called him one of the Boswell Office’s most resourceful scholars. He died alone in 1965. Few details of him survive, except in the acknowledgements of a handful…
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Boswell Got Around – See the Full List of Maps in Yale’s Boswell Trade Editions
Ohhhh, I love a map, me! Maps bring stories to life. If you’re going to read James Boswell’s personal journals then follow along on the maps provided by the editors. I’ve included a list of maps in each of the 14 volumes in the Yale Trade series. Click and read.
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The Moment Claude Colleer Abbott Discovered Boswell’s London Journal
Look on this face. I’ve tried to capture the hope, the fear of disappointment, the tension that hangs in the split second it takes realisation to reach the brain. This is how I imagine Claude Colleer Abbott looked in the just-before-moment while reading the handwriting on the first page of…
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Boswell Freaks Only. Yale’s Trade and Research Editions Compared
You a Boswell Freak? Here’s a test: how much detail can you read and keep your eyes open. I’m comparing Yale’s Trade and Research editions of James Boswell’s journals. To the ordinary reader this may sound deathly boring, but Boswell nuts dig this kind of stuff. It’s long. Click. Read.
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Happy Birthday to Adam Smith’s ‘Wealth of Nations’
On 9 March 2026 a bunch of folk will celebrate the 250th anniversary of the publication of the Wealth of Nations. The book, written by Scottish philosopher Adam Smith, was published in 1776. The book led to its author being labelled the father of modern economics. Come on, Read!!
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Benn’s Sixpenny Library Explodes with Knowledge
Want an entertaining and learned history book exploding with detail, written between the Wars? Oh, please, everybody wants that. Try Benn’s Sixpenny Library. There are 252 titles in the series. My copy’s about Eighteenth century Prime Ministers. Go get one. After you read this post. Cho!
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Edward Gibbon’s Genius Moment on 15 October 1764
All great things have a moment of conception, a single point in time when the light comes on and an idea is born. I call this a Genius Moment. Edward Gibbon had one, resulting in his History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Read on, Macduff!
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250 Years since Gibbon’s Masterpiece The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
On Tuesday 17 February it will be the 250th anniversary of a masterpiece in scholarship and literature, a book, or rather a work in six volumes, which many will know, but only a few have read. Of course…you all knew! It’s Edward Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,…
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How Many of Your Books Have You Read?
The parents-in-law came for dinner on Hogmanay and my wife’s father pointed at one of our bookcases and asked: “Have you read all of these books?” That’s the eternal power of the father-in-law…to question, but secretly critique. How does one respond? Read the post.
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New Year Resolutions – James Boswell Style
I gave up making New Year Resolutions some years back because like most people I never stuck to them and often never even got started. I think for 2026, I’ll try a technique used by the young James Boswell, author of the great Life of Samuel Johnson (in short: To…
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Genius Fan’s Four Big Anniversaries for 2026
The coming year, 2026, is a big year to celebrate things that happened in 1776. That is, it’s a big year for 250th anniversaries, and I’m going to highlight four big ones. If you read history then it’s likely you’ll know these – they’re the ones everyone talks about. Here…
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6 Ways to Experience Boswell’s London Journal
Today is the 75th anniversary of the publication here in Britain of James Boswell’s London Journal 1762-1763. It hit the bookshops on Monday 4 December 1950 and was an instant bestseller in UK and the USA. Readers loved it, hundreds of thousands of copies were printed and sold across both…
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London Spectators: Addison, Steele & Boswell
In 1748, at the age of seven, James Boswell was introduced to a character that would become one of his first role models: The Spectator, author of highly popular essays about people and society in London in the early years of the Eighteenth century. So when Boswell managed to wangle…