James Boswell by Lydia Bobb https://padlet.com/bobblydia/oz1ywxz8p7vr3tlc A genius exhibitionist en-us 2021-06-09 08:25:11 UTC 2021-06-10 09:40:27 UTC hello@padlet.com James Boswell, the 9th Laird of Auchinleck (1740 - 1795), was a Scottish biographer, diarist, and lawyer, born in Edinburgh. He is best known for his biography of his friend and older contemporary, the English writer Samuel Johnson, which is commonly said to be the greatest biography written in the English language. A great mass of Boswell's diaries, letters and private papers were recovered from the 1920s to the 1950s, and their ongoing publication by Yale University has transformed his reputation. bobblydia https://padlet.com/bobblydia/oz1ywxz8p7vr3tlc/wish/1595226445 2021-06-09 08:26:02 UTC https://padlet.com/bobblydia/oz1ywxz8p7vr3tlc/wish/1595226445 bobblydia https://padlet.com/bobblydia/oz1ywxz8p7vr3tlc/wish/1595229515 When his personal letters were discovered, it was celebrated as a work of genius mysteriously conjured up by gregarious buffoon, neurotic and sot. ]]> 2021-06-09 08:28:00 UTC https://padlet.com/bobblydia/oz1ywxz8p7vr3tlc/wish/1595229515 bobblydia https://padlet.com/bobblydia/oz1ywxz8p7vr3tlc/wish/1595230403 Thomas Babington Macaulay called upon his reputation as an exhibitionist who could not control his huge sexual appetites or his consumption of alcohol and expressed that ‘if he had not been a great fool, he would have never been a great writer’ (Martin, 1) Not only Macaulay laughed at Boswell, but he was pilloried in the press and laughed at by the powerful and the great as well as by the more humble. Even today, Boswell’s name conjures up vague images of immorality, amorality, exhibitionism, egoism, and vanity. Most people found him attractive, however, he saw himself as an actor and put himself on a show. In print, especially his openness and recklessness embarrassed many, and it’s a short step from embarrassment to resentment. 

]]> 2021-06-09 08:28:37 UTC https://padlet.com/bobblydia/oz1ywxz8p7vr3tlc/wish/1595230403 bobblydia https://padlet.com/bobblydia/oz1ywxz8p7vr3tlc/wish/1595233351 At first, the newly published journals confirmed the nineteenth century perception of Boswell as a compulsive womanizer, drinker and gambler. Later, they started seeing him as a complex figure, someone they understood due to his honesty, although he was still full of paradoxes, opposites and extremes.

]]> 2021-06-09 08:30:30 UTC https://padlet.com/bobblydia/oz1ywxz8p7vr3tlc/wish/1595233351 bobblydia https://padlet.com/bobblydia/oz1ywxz8p7vr3tlc/wish/1598161654 Boswell said about himself: “he was an actor on stage surrounded by mirrors, each reflecting back at him the multiple aspects of his mind.”]]> 2021-06-10 09:40:02 UTC https://padlet.com/bobblydia/oz1ywxz8p7vr3tlc/wish/1598161654