Today is Literature History…


On this day in 1795 James Boswell died, aged fifty-four. Even without his two-decade relationship to Samuel Johnson and the books which came from it, Boswell would have a secure place in literary history. This is due to the remarkable stash of journals, letters and personal papers which he kept, and which his friends and relatives kept from the world -- out of "Pride and Negligence," to use the title of Frederick Pottle's book (one of several) on the incredible story. When Boswell's papers were discovered in the 1920s and '30s the journals were eventually published in fourteen volumes, with one of these, his London Journal, now a million-seller. Other volumes of manuscripts, letters and such documents continue to be published in scholarly editions issued by the "Boswell Factory" at Yale University, which made front-page news when it purchased most of the known hoard in 1949 for almost half-a-million dollars.