Monday, January 05, 2009

Boswell, December 1764

I have put up at Houyhnhnm Land the first part of the series I had promised on Boswell's interesting meetings with Rousseau and Voltaire in 1764. Here is the teaser:

James Boswell, best known for his biography of Samuel Johnson, had a very interesting December in 1764. In his tour of the Continent, Boswell had come to Switzerland, and there he met Rousseau and Voltaire. Unfortunately, he never had a chance to write up the meetings in good form, as he had with Johnson; but even though the interactions are scattered through journal entries, memoranda, and correspondence in cryptic form, it still provides a valuable sighting of the two philosophers in their natural habitat.


Read "A Very Boswell Christmas, Part I"

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