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ItemID: #104316
Cost: $600.00

Boswell's London Journal

James Boswell

BOSWELL’S LIFE OF BOSWELL

BOSWELL, James. Boswell's London Journal 1762-63. New York: McGraw-Hill, (1950). Octavo, modern full black morocco gilt, raised bands, marbled endpapers, all edges gilt. $600.

First edition of Boswell’s journal for 1762-63, handsomely bound in full morocco by Bayntun-Riviere.

At his death, Boswell left behind a large collection of letters and journals. All these papers were thought to have been destroyed; but in the 1920s, Boswell's archives were discovered—packed away in the hay lofts and croquet boxes of his descendants at Malahide Castle in Ireland and Fettercairn House in Scotland. In 1949 the collection was acquired by Yale University, which commenced in 1950 to publish an edition of the private papers that eventually grew to 13 volumes. This is the first of those volumes, published separately, edited and with an Introduction by Frederick Pottle and with a Preface by Christopher Morley. Boswell's frankness about his often disreputable private behavior has won him a modern readership of his own, to compete with the devotion to his great biography of Johnson. Bound retaining original cartographic endpapers depicting a map of London. Bookplate.

Fine condition in full morocco-gilt.

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