Biography:

Frederick Albert Pottle. (1897-1987)

The foremost Boswellian researcher, Pottle was the chairman of the editorial committee of the Yale editions until his retirement due to ill health in 1983. . He published his first books about Boswell in the 1920s, and assisted Ralph Isham in publishing the initial private printing of the Boswell papers around 1930.

Pottle was born in Lovell in Maine, USA on Aug. 3, 1897. He graduated from Colby College in 1917, on whose Board of Trustees he sat for many years (1932-1959). As an orderly with Evacuation Hospital No. 8, he participated in World War I in 1917-18. In 1929 he published his war memoirs called Stretchers. (Link) In 1925 Pottle received his Ph.D. from Yale University, where he taught from that same year until his retirement in 1966, from 1930 as Professor of English. From 1944 he was Sterling Professor of English at the university. It is likely that Pottle's interest in Boswell was partly spawned by Chauncey Tinker who taught at Yale from 1903 to 1945.

In the acknowledgements of The General Correspondence of James Boswell 1766-1769 (Vol. 1), published in 1993, the editors writes that [u]ppermost in the minds of the editors who have worked on this edition is the image of Frederick A. Pottle wearing his green eye-shade, working long hours in 'the Boswell factory' in Sterling Library, always willing to halt his own work and answer a question or suggest a solution for at student in difficulties.

Pottle wrote a lot of books and articles, most, but not all, about Boswell. As early as 1929 his book The Literary Career of James Boswell was published (reissued in 1967). In 1931 he wrote the preface to Margaret Ashmun's The Singing Swan: An Account of Anna Seward and her Acquaintance with Dr. Johnson, Boswell & Others of Their Time. In 1966 he published one of the best biographies about James Boswell, James Boswell: The Earlier Years 1740-1769. The second half of Boswell's life was dealt with by Frank Brady in James Boswell: The Later Years 1769-1795, published in 1984. All but the last of the Yale Trade editions of Boswells journals were edited by Pottle.

There is no doubt, that Frederick A. Pottle in his long life did more than anyone else to introduce the real James Boswell to the public, and he proved once and for all, that there is much more to Boswell than what has earlier been called his accidental masterpiece, Life of Johnson.

Interesting litterature:

If you make a search for Frederick Pottle on the Abebooks used books search engine or at Questia, The Internet's Largest Library, you will get a lot of search hits. Most of them are Boswell related, but as Professor of English, Pottle also wrote articles on poets such as William Wordsworth and other 18th century writers. Pottles wartime memoirs Stretchers are also available, both via Abebooks and at Questia, The Internet's Largest Library, as is The Singing Swan.