Book Description

This volume is the final in the Yale Boswell Editions' manuscript edition of the Life of Johnson, a four-volume sequence designed to stand as a research supplement to the Hill-Powell version of the Life. The first volume, edited by Marshall Waingrow and covering the years 1709-1765, appeared in 1994, and the second, 1766-1776, edited by Bruce Redford with Elizabeth Goldring, in 1998. The third, 1776-1780, edited by Thomas F. Bonnell was published in 2012. This fourth volume traces Boswell's processes of composition from first draft to final publication. It restores much deleted material and passages lost or overlooked at proof and revision stage. It also corrects a host of errors--from compositorial to misreadings--that have stood in all editions of Boswell's biographical masterwork. Thomas Bonnell's annotation clarifies a range of textual issues, and sheds revealing light on Boswell's processes of selection and deletion.