Boswell and the Press

Essays on the Ephemeral Writing of James Boswell

Donald J. Newman (Ed.)

2021
220 pages
$37.95
ISBN 9781684482818

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.

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Reviews

". . . 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, January 2023

"Boswell and the Press: Essays on the Ephemeral Writings of James Boswell, Esq. is a powerful, intellectually stimulating, and persuasively written book. It offers a range of compelling and often luminous chapters by authors expert in Boswellian studies. It is remarkable how successfully 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 finding 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-Century England

"Among the best of [these] 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 [Boswell's] life."
- The Eighteenth-Century Intelligencer, March 2021

About the editor:

Donald J. Newman is an independent scholar in Texas with research interests in James Boswell and eighteenth-century journalism. Published in the Cambridge History of the English Short Story, his most recent essay, "Short Prose Narratives of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries," examines the development of the short story primarily in eighteenth-century British magazines. He has edited a collection of essays on Boswell, James Boswell: Psychological Interpretations as well as published numerous articles about him. He has also edited two collections on eighteenth-century periodicals: The Spectator: Emerging Discourses and Fair Philosopher: Eliza Haywood and The Female Spectator.

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Cloth: $150.00, 9781684482825; PDF: $37.95, 9781684482856; EPUB: $37.95, 9781684482832