For two centuries, scholars have considered the ephemeral writing of James Boswell--his periodical writing, his pamphlets, and his broadsides--unworthy of serious critical attention because it is too topical, too superficial, or too trivial to advance our study of Boswell or his literary career. Boswell and the Press challenges that assessment. The essays collected in this volume demonstrate that a study of his ephemeral writing enhances our comprehension of his interests, capabilities, and proclivities as an author, and refines our understanding of how the print environment in which he worked influenced what he wrote and how he wrote it. This collection both contextualizes Boswell's ephemeral writing in terms of the publishing industry of his day and considers individual works that have received little critical attention or, as in works like The Hypochodriack, that have received inadequate attention. The essays gathered here demonstrate that a study of Boswell's ephemeral writing can provide a fuller, more nuanced understanding of Boswell the author and his literary career. This collection will also be of interest to scholars studying eighteenth-century British print culture and historians of periodical publishing.
Industry Reviews
"Among the best of those essays is Newman's introductory overview of Boswell's ephemera, which largely avoids the necessary evil of such introductions, namely, a brisk trot through all the following essays in an attempt to illustrate, or create, a unity in the collection. A mere three of the 29 pages are so employed, with the balance providing an excellent summary of the role that producing journalism played throughout the author's life." * Eighteenth-Century Intelligencer *
"This groundbreaking volume of new essays on James Boswell is of unusually high quality: the essays are individually eloquent and informative, and as a whole the volume opens up Boswell to new approaches with new information. If you thought that James Boswell was old hat, Boswell and the Press will have you rethinking the career of Johnson's biographer." -- George Justice * author of The Manufacturers of Literature: Writing and the Literary Marketplace in Eighteenth-Century England *
"Boswell and the Press is a powerful, intellectually stimulating, and persuasively written book, offering a range of compelling and often luminous chapters by authors expert in Boswellian studies. The book breaks new ground in surveying a large corpus-for example, The Cub, at New-market; A Letter to the People of Scotland; An Account of Corsica-and finds fresh things to say about an author who most of us thought we knew as well as the back of our hand." -- Anthony Lee * editor of Community and Solitude: New Essays on Johnson's Circle *
"Boswell and the Press is a powerful, intellectually stimulating, and persuasively written book, offering a range of compelling and often luminous chapters by authors expert in Boswellian studies. The book breaks new ground in surveying a large corpus-for example, The Cub, at New-market; A Letter to the People of Scotland; An Account of Corsica-and finds fresh things to say about an author who most of us thought we knew as well as the back of our hand." -- Anthony Lee * editor of Community and Solitude: New Essays on Johnson's Circle *
"This groundbreaking volume of new essays on James Boswell is of unusually high quality: the essays are individually eloquent and informative, and as a whole the volume opens up Boswell to new approaches with new information. If you thought that James Boswell was old hat, Boswell and the Press will have you rethinking the career of Johnson's biographer." -- George Justice * author of The Manufacturers of Literature: Writing and the Literary Marketplace in Eighteenth-Centur *
"Among the best of those essays is Newman's introductory overview of Boswell's ephemera, which largely avoids the necessary evil of such introductions, namely, a brisk trot through all the following essays in an attempt to illustrate, or create, a unity in the collection. A mere three of the 29 pages are so employed, with the balance providing an excellent summary of the role that producing journalism played throughout the author's life." * Eighteenth-Century Intelligencer *
". . . this collection surpasses the modestly stated aims to sort the 'wheat [from] the chaff' (2) and to 'constitute a start' (27) for the serious consideration of Boswell's ephemeral writing, blazing a transformative path for Boswellian studies. With the recent shuttering of the Yale Editions of the Private Papers of James Boswell, this kind of scholarship is more valuable than ever." * Journal of British Studies *
