Tag: Books
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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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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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Genius Fan Celebrates Its First Birthday Today!
Today, Genius Fan celebrates its 1st birthday. I’m really pleased that it’s reached this far. It started off as a way to force myself to sketch by setting the challenge of drawing two scenes each week as a way of improving my illustration skills. And the idea was to post…
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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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Jane Austen, Eighteenth Century Author
Today, 16 December, is the 250th anniversary of the birth of Jane Austen. An excellent take away of this blog post is that you should make it a resolution for 2026 to read her novel, Pride and Prejudice. It’s her most famous (you know, Mr Darcy and all that) and…
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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…
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Finally, I Bought a First Edition of Boswell’s London Journal
If one is going to celebrate the 75th birthday of Boswell’s London Journal, then one should jolly well do so with a first edition. That was my thinking a few months ago, but I’ve already got a few copies and shelf space is running low…so another volume? Yes, shuttup! Of…
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Highlights from Smellie’s Book Catalogue
There I am, staring directly at an Eighteenth century book collection, arms length from titles someone in 1750 would consider a ‘must have’ in their home. This is William Smellie’s library, all 300+ volumes, half of which are reference works for a teaching physician and the other half…for leisure? Two…
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Dr Smellie’s Treatise and Anatomical Tables
When one first sees William Smellie’s personal library, an Eighteenth century collection of 300+ volumes, stacked nicely into 24 shelves…it’s a little overwhelming. It’s a lot of books. Yes, but it’s dwarfed by Sir Walter Scott’s personal library at Abbotsford House, near Melrose, for example. That’s huge and almost unreal,…
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William Smellie’s Early Career & Book Collection
Keys in hand, librarian Elena Focardi makes her way to the locked door protecting the precious and valuable books at Lanark Library. I’ve come to see a book collection that’s 275 years old – owned by the town’s famous Eighteenth century son, William Smellie. He bequeathed his book collection, after…
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Book Collection Explorer: William Smellie
The book collection of Eighteenth century doctor William Smellie lies behind a locked door one might mistake for a janitor’s closet. You walk up the stairs, across the lobby, through one room, through another room, to an inauspicious, but secure entrance, beyond which is a temperature and humidity-controlled room, conditions…
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Happy 75th Birthday to Boswell’s London Journal
Happy Birthday to James Boswell’s “London Journal, 1762-63” – it’s 75 years old next month. Hurrah!! QUOTE: “The Eighteenth century in this one volume of the journal is expressed more patently than in nearly all the other contemporary letter-writers and fiction-makers of the period put together. And the artistry! Make…
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I Wish My Most-Used Books Were in Hardback
I own two books which through constant use and consultation are becoming increasingly raggedy, with spines I anticipate will split in 2026 accompanied by the sad ungluing of pages. In short: collapse. The books? To The Hebrides: Samuel Johnson’s Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland and James Boswell’s Journal of a Tour…
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The Payoff in Decorating Upheaval is Bookcase Tidying
My wife doesn’t appreciate the pleasure that goes with tidying and reorganising our (my) bookcases, so when the topic of redecorating the living room pops up…I know it’s a day of tidying, (putting all books into boxes) furniture moving, cleaning and prep, followed by a day of painting, then six…
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Boswell’s is Big, But Voltaire’s is Voluminous
Appendix 5 to James Caudle’s excellent article entitled Editing James Boswell, 1924-2010: Pasts, Presents, Futures shows the estimated number of volumes one should expect to find across an edition of a range of historical papers. He’s focused on the Scottish writer and lawyer James Boswell (1740-1795), and his appendix (not…
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A new Assembly or Allocation of Materials
In my two most recent posts (On the Hunt… and A Plaque for Burns…) I made the point that it’s fun and interesting to get out of the house and use a book as a guide to track down a place that’s relevant to your favourite historical period or person.…
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Scottish Enlightenment? Herman: Yes! Porter: …no
Popular history authors Roy Porter and Arthur Herman have opposing views on whether or not there was a Scottish Enlightenment. American Arthur Herman says there was, and to back it up wrote a book called The Scottish Enlightenment: The Scots’ Invention of the Modern World. British Roy Porter says there…
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Artifacts of Pre-Computer Library Book Borrowing
Ninety five per cent of the books I buy are second hand, and they often have marks of the previous owners – many of whom were libraries. The postie delivered a book the other day, The History of Scottish Literature Volume 2, 1660-1800, and when I opened the cover I…
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Book Facts Rather than Internet Facts?
Which do you trust more: Book facts or internet facts? When I began the Genius Fan blog my plan was to create illustrated stories based around: ‘James Boswell and his life and times in the Eighteenth century’. The objective was to reach like-minded fans of Boswell and the Eighteenth century.…
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Dr Beattie, Boswell and Johnson. Friends.
Discovering Scottish Philosopher Dr James Beattie. Often, in these little blog posts I’m trying to understand the pleasure I get in reading about historical figures. In this one I got a surprise in spotting a familiar name in an unexpected place and then a sense of connection, of completion, when…
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Le Voyage de Boswell et Johnson aux Hébrides
I have a French language version of the combined accounts of Boswell and Johnson’s 1773 tour of Scotland, it’s called Voyage dans les Hébrides. My French isn’t good enough to fluently read this book (yet), but I’ve read the Boswell and Johnson accounts in English so I know the story…
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Scholar Donald Greene, Johnson Defender
I wrote a post a few months ago (Pick a Book, Any Book…) about the serendipity in making a casual selection from one’s bookcase. This post is a similar process, but focused on the outcome – the discovery of an important scholar: Donald Greene. I was dashing out the room…
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Boswell’s Complaint, Portnoy’s Complaint
In 1969, American writer Philip Roth published his fourth novel, Portnoy’s Complaint. It’s a tough read for a man who’s almost sixty (that’s me), but for a young man of nineteen (that was me back in 1984) – it was…awesome. It’s a psychiatrist’s chair-account of Alexander Portnoy’s struggle as a…
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RW Chapman Continues Johnson Studies While Shelling the Germans in WWI
When you read books about the Eighteenth century, the lives of their authors are often equally fascinating. Chapman the scholar Usually the interest comes from their time spent during one of the world wars. Robert William Chapman (1881-1960) is one such scholar-author – of literary history. If you read about…
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Finding Boswell in the Mitchell Library
This afternoon’s mission for an Eighteenth century experience ended in disappointment. And then satisfaction. I went to the Mitchell Library in Glasgow to see the collection known as the Private Papers of James Boswell from Malahide Castle in the Collection of Lt. Colonel Ralph Heyward Isham. (This privately funded and…
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Bookshelf variety over calf leather uniformity
Stand back, take in the view, row upon row of books on the shelves of Sir Walter Scott’s library. I was at his home in the Scottish Borders recently and I can tell you the library is at once breathtaking, stirring and impressive. Its true fascination lies in the individual…
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Cinema in the Eighteenth Century
Picture this: the year is 1772, you work as a farrier’s apprentice at a Darlington coaching inn, a lucky appointment because the owner of the inn allows you to read books from his little collection. That’s the year the innkeeper takes ownership of an edition of Oliver Goldsmith’s 1770 poem…
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A Quite Pointless Post About Book Heft
It’s a trivial pleasure, but discovering that a book you just bought has ‘next level’ heft is very satisfying…Look, I’ll keep this short. This post has been sitting in my drafts for weeks. I’ve rewritten the intro more than a dozen times. Why? Because: Who cares about the heft of…
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Bookcase For You, Bookcase For Me
We’ve been discussing buying a second bookcase, but where to put it is vexing us. The most obvious place for a new bookcase is the spot currently occupied by the exercise bike (which we use as a clothes drier) bought during Covid lockdown. There’s no direct sunlight and its away…
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Pick a Book, Any Book. Now Tell Me What It Is.
Let me tell you one of the great pleasures to be had in owning your own library (“It’s a bookcase for crying out loud! Not a library.”): I can pick a book off the shelves and, having forgotten that I had bought that volume, flick through its pages while stirring…
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Library Fantasists! Visit Sir Walter Scott’s Home
The world’s largest personal library – still intact – consists of more than 9,000 volumes and fills two rooms in Abbotsford House, near Melrose, Scotland. That’s the former home of the amazing best-selling Victorian author of the Waverley novels, Sir Walter Scott. It’s delightful to approach the building, with its…
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Buying Two Eighteenth Century Best Sellers by James Boswell and Samuel Johnson
If a bolt of lightning should strike me, leaving me dead, the person who discovers my smoking corpse (it’s always a dog walker) may notice the faintest smile on my blackened lips. If they’re perceptive they’ll read that smile as ‘satisfaction’ – and they’d be right for I now own…
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I Bought My Favourite Book by James Boswell and it’s 240-Years-Old
Yes, this site is about the Eighteenth century, but it’s also about book collecting…that is, books relevant to the, you guessed it, Eighteenth century. And it is to this hallowed conjunction of interests that I now turn my keyboard. On the dining room table where I write sits a package…
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‘Discovery’: The Best Way to Learn History
One of the many pleasures in learning about history and times past is ‘discovery’. By this I mean the process by which a person follows their interest and simply finds things out. I expect everyone has experienced that process. You can accumulate a great deal of knowledge on a subject…