“Generally speaking, Boswell is still thought of primarily as [Samuel] Johnson's biographer” (29), Donald J. Newman admits in the opening chapter to Boswell and the Press: Essays on the Ephemeral Writing of James Boswell. Indeed, scholarship on Boswell has been long wedded to the Life of Johnson (1791), but this riveting study begins the challenging and necessary work of disentangling Boswell from his biographical subject. The nine chapters of the edited collection shed light on Boswell as a prolific author of the periodical press—a medium within which he arguably exceeds Johnson in scope and ingenuity. Offering critical methodologies for understanding this “variegated” (27) body of work, this volume highlights how Boswell used ephemeral writing to tap into the zeitgeist of eighteenth-century culture.
Newman's introduction situates Boswell as a burgeoning author within the expansion of periodical publication in the mid-to-late eighteenth century. The plethora of periodical venues, including the newly created format of the chronicle, enabled Boswell to “publish an article or essay on any subject anytime and anywhere he wished” (6). Additionally, Boswell was able to seek “public affirmation” (8) of his wit, intellect, and talent among a substantial readership that “constituted a little less than one-third of the population” (3). Newman divides Boswell's literary career into three eras: the “literary genius period” (1758–1767) distinguished by “an effort to impress readers with his wit, humor, and cleverness” (11); the “journalistic period” (1768–1784) when his “attention shifted from himself to events, the life around him, and the cultures in which he lived” (11); and the “pursuit of immortality period [1784–1795)] . . . dominated by Boswell's struggle to establish his claim as the superior biographer” (12). Using this career trajectory, Newman outlines Boswell's lifelong experimentation with various printed formats and clever exploitation of periodical conventions to lay the groundwork for the collection's subsequent eight essays.
Although diffuse in subject matter, the essays are unified by their examination of Boswell as a pioneer of ephemeral writing, charting both his successful and unsuccessful attempts to revolutionize print culture. In chapter 2, Paul Tankard dispels “modern assumptions about anonymity and pseudonymity on the construction of authorship in the eighteenth century” (45) by contending that anonymous and pseudonymous periodical publications followed a set of recognizable conventions and formulae. Tankard demonstrates that Boswell strategically deploys and manipulates these eighteenth-century conventions in “roughly 600 identified periodical items” (35)—effortlessly shifting between initialism, allusive pseudonyms, the use of his own name, and anonymity—to suit the occasion and rhetorical aim of each of these pieces. James J. Caudle provides a comprehensive bibliographic study of Boswell's prospectus for a periodical written entirely in the Scots language, The Sutiman (The Chimney Sweep). In addition to publishing for the first time the full text of the prospectus both in its original Scots and in English translation, Caudle contextualizes the discarded design for The Sutiman alongside Boswell's conflicted Anglo-Scottish identity, his similarly abandoned plan to create a Scots dictionary, and the possible reasons for his inability to execute the project.
The next three essays explore Boswell in the role of versifier, supplying the necessary background to appreciate his oft-overlooked, innovative poetry. Terry Seymour presents “Verses in the Character of a Corsican” (1769) and “William Pitt, the grocer of London” (1790) as case studies evincing Boswell's self-promotional motives and somewhat haphazard methodology for broadside publication. By pairing together broadsides that date from disparate points in his writing career and personal life, Seymour illuminates Boswell's pattern for composing verse performances to be read aloud at “celebrity event[s]” (69), but printing them too late for the intended same-day distribution to attendees. Newman's essay on An Elegy on the Death of an Amiable Young Lady (1761) postulates that the twenty-four-page, co-authored pamphlet is an elaborate ruse. Countering previous readings of the pamphlet as “a collection of discrete parts” (80) earnestly extolling the virtues of its two mediocre poems, Newman's holistic study contends that the “real interest of the pamphlet is . . . the recommendatory letters” (81) that prime the reader for the poetic farce they will encounter. In an engaging analysis of The Cub, at New-market (1762), Celia Barnes demystifies the elaborate metatext as a unique poetic “vision of the literary marketplace [within which] the formal apparatuses of publicity, patronage, and print culture are reimagined as little more than a series of private interactions between like-minded, fun-loving gentlemen” (95).
To conclude the volume, two essays on The Hypochondriack (1777–1783) and the last chapter on A Letter to the People of Scotland (1783) demonstrate the impressive scope of Boswell's respective influence on the “essay tradition in English culture” (125), on the “novels of Frances Burney, Maria Edgeworth, and Jane Austen” (129), and as “the catalyst for two months of . . . addresses from all over Britain applauding the king's action” (155) regarding the East India Company Bill. Allan Ingram observes that Boswell departs from the “Spectator tradition of the essay, with its tone of polite detachment and cultured conservatism” (119) to allow “the self to be a core factor within the essay” (125). Similarly appraising Boswell's cutting-edge approach to “the embodied portrayal of cognition” (129), Jennifer Preston Wilson details how The Hypochondriack “establish[ed] a new psychological perspective that undergirds the turn-of-the-century novel” (140). In the final essay of the volume, Nigel Aston explores A Letter to the People of Scotland, which constructs a case for the “transparent legitimacy of George III's handling of the constitutional crisis” (153) provoked by the East India Company Bill, thereby rallying support for the newly formed Pitt government. Though Boswell's letter inspired a successful petitioning movement, his personal objective for this venture (to seek a political appointment) ultimately failed.
Overall, 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. Boswell and the Press not only illustrates how “Boswell's ephemeral works . . . can provide a fuller, more nuanced understanding of . . . his literary career” (29), but also, how periodical publication was instrumental in establishing his much longed for literary fame. Boswell has been celebrated as the “father of modern biography” for the Life—perhaps it is time to add the “father of modern journalism” to his accolades.
