Vermont Daily Briefing (Free subscription) | 10/07/2008
Publisher’s privilege, the occasional, once-a-year post about something unrelated to politics: my new novel, The Brother’s Boswell, finally went up on Amazon today. The book won’t actually be released until Spring 2009, but at least the cover’s finished. And not too shabby a cover it is. And the breathless jacket copy is [...]
Anecdotal Evidence (Free subscription) | 10/02/2008
When I left a job to take another in 2001, friends made a going-away gift of Peter Martin’s A Life of James Boswell and, as a perfect redundancy for my shelves, the brick-like Everyman’s edition of Boswell’s Life of Johnson , which has since become my reading copy. This juxtaposition of books and lives points out the peculiarly symbiotic relation between Boswell and Johnson...
The Spoons That Are My Ears! (Free subscription) | 09/30/2008
The original Exploits of Engelbrecht was illustrated by James Boswell -- a man who should be even more famous than the other James Boswell (the biographer). I once came across a Boswell exhibition by accident while killing time in London. Boswell's satirical work is second to none, his grotesques as moving as those of Mervyn Peake, his elaborations no less...
The Independent (Free subscription) | 09/24/2008
Ian Jack, Emeritus Professor of English Literature at Cambridge, was the author of a series of masterly studies and editions of English writers between 1660 and 1860. His critical discussion was careful and decisive, his editing learned and lucid. There is no reader of Keats, or of Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights, or of Robert Browning, but must reckon a debt to Ian Jack.Ian Robert James Jack...
Semicolon (Free subscription) | 09/18/2008
Today is the birthday of lexicographer, essayist, novelist, literary critic, and eighteenth century celebrity Samuel Johnson. He was born in 1709, so next year will mark the 300th anniversary of his birth. Commonly known as Dr. Johnson, he was the subject of James Boswell’s Life of Samuel Johnson, one of the most famous biographies ever [...]
Manchester Evening News (Free subscription) | 09/17/2008
... courtier Sir Walter Raleigh.Following on from their historical recreation of Samuel Johnson and James Boswell’s tour of Scotland last year, writer Stewart Lee - at the suggestion of producer Ian Gillies - has penned a similar vehicle for Liz and Walt and again places Simon Munnery and Miles Jupp in the eponymous lead roles.The historical duo are played as if both trying their hand...
Manchester Evening News (Free subscription) | 09/05/2008
... renowned eighteenth century writer and drunk Samuel Johnson and his Scottish fan and biographer James Boswell. "Iain said to me how would you adapt Boswell and Johnson's journey around Scotland for the stage, because he thought that might do well at Edinburgh. I said, well I'd do it like a talk show and try and do them both as kind of comics," recalls Lee.Munnery, meanwhile,...
Boing Boing (Free subscription) | 08/18/2008
... Page identifies this quote as a corruption of something Johnson did say, which was recorded by James Boswell in his Life of Johnson. The actual Johnson quote is: “Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it.” I confirmed this by searching the text of Boswell’s Life of Johnson online. Lisa Gold: Research Maven...
Daily News (Free subscription) | 08/18/2008
PASADENA - James E. Ludlam, who helped shape California's healthcare environment during the last half of the 20th century and is regarded as one of the founders of healthcare law, has died.
