This volume, tenth in the Yale Boswell Editions Research Series of
correspondence, collects the letters exchanged between James
Boswell (1740-1795) and Sir William Forbes of Pitsligo (1739-1806),
eminent banker, civic improver, philanthropist, literary and
cultural patron, and lay leader of Edinburgh's 'English Episcopal'
community. Forbes served Boswell as his most valued Scottish
advisor, an affectionate and admired counsellor to whom he would
often turn for personal, financial, moral, and religious guidance,
and whom he would name executor of his estate and co-guardian of
his children. Their friendship probably began in 1759 as new
members of the same Masonic lodge in Edinburgh, and it deepened
over time, and included their families. Boswell shared with Forbes
significant portions of his private journal, and discussed with him
his authorial ambitions as he developed the innovative biographical
technique that would characterize his major publications on Samuel
Johnson. He sought Forbes's opinions about his original 1773
account of what would become his Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides,
with Samuel Johnson (1785), and about his journal of his 1777 visit
with Johnson at Ashbourne, later used in The Life of Samuel Johnson
(1791). Boswell, in turn, broadened and enriched Forbes's social
range, providing a gateway into his remarkable circle of friends in
London, in particular the members of the 'Literary Club'. As
Richard B. Sher explains in his introduction, none of Boswell's
other close friends straddled Boswell's various worlds--his family
life and professional career in Edinburgh, his lairdship of the
Auchinleck estate in Ayrshire, his literary life in London--in this
way. The volume, while thoroughly documenting the friendship that
lies at its core, also illuminates the lives of Boswell and Forbes
individually, especially Boswell's final decade in London. It
publishes a total of 111 comprehensively annotated letters, few of
which have appeared previously in print: 79 exchanged between
Forbes and Boswell between 1772 and 1794, and 32 involving other
correspondents. The edition draws extensively on unpublished
manuscripts in both the Boswell Collection at Yale and the
Fettercairn Papers in the National Library of Scotland, including
revealing letters from Forbes to his beloved wife 'Betsy', Lady
Forbes, and to his close friend James Beattie, who would become
Forbes's own biographical subject in the decade after Boswell's
death.
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