Tag: Israel Shenker

  • Revealing the Boswell-Johnson Pilgrims

    Revealing the Boswell-Johnson Pilgrims

    The earliest account I’ve found of someone following in the footsteps of Boswell and Johnson’s great tour of Scotland in 1773 was that of the great Johnson scholar, George Birkbeck Hill (1835-1903). It’s called Footsteps of Dr Johnson (Scotland), it was published in 1890 and it’s a great big book…

  • Lost Correspondence is a ‘Mountain of Rubies’

    Lost Correspondence is a ‘Mountain of Rubies’

    Nothing’s hidden or lost anymore. Back in 1975 though, before broadband, smartphones and the World Wide Web put everything at our fingertips, one could still believe there were exciting discoveries yet to be made. That was the case among literary scholars who speculated about the existence of letters exchanged between…