Offering the texts of letter between Boswell and 123 correspondents, this volume covers Boswell through the early stages of his legal career in Edinburgh and closes shortly after the time of his marriage to his penniless Ayrshire cousin, Margaret Montgomerie. Among various topics, the volume traces the aftermath of Boswell's vigorous partisan legal and journalistic involvement with the Douglas Cause, the beginnings of his patronage of an obscure struggling playwright and poet, William Julius Mickle, and the publication and reception of his successful Account of Corsica and his efforts to rouse British interest in the Corsican cause.

This is the first of two volumes containing Boswell's correspondence with more than 200 people, including Pitt, Rousseau, Paoli, John Wilkes, Sir Alexander Dick, Baretti and numerous women friends. The letters date from a three year period between 1766, when Boswell returned from his Grand Tour, to 1769, and his marriage to his cousin Margaret Montgomerie. They show Boswell in the happiest days of his life as the law student became a practising advocate, the literary hopeful a best-selling author, the pursuer of rich heiresses a family man, and the dreamer a landowner as the Laird of Dalblair. The letters to and from his correspondents are reprinted in full, with extensive explanatory notes.