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More than 5000 entries on the history, culture and life of Britain (published in 1993 by Macmillan, now out of print)
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James Boswell
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(1740–95) Scottish author, known first as the biographer of Dr *Johnson and more recently as an outstanding diarist. He met Johnson in London in 1763, and their friendship was maintained in Boswell's annual visits from Edinburgh, where he was employed as a lawyer. In 1773 the two of them visited the Hebrides. Boswell invariably noted in his journal the best of the great man's conversation, and after Johnson's death in 1784 he devoted himself to moulding this material into a biography. The first instalment was The Journal of a Tour of the Hebrides (1785), followed by The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791). It was only in the 1920s that Boswell's private papers came to light, in the possession of a descendant. His journal depicts with great immediacy the social life of the time, including his own often disastrous sexual adventures.
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