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Book Details
Long title
Boswells' Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D., 1773
Year of 1st publication
1936
Book description

This is an edited and thoroughly annotated edition of the only part of Boswell's journal that was published by himself in his own lifetime (apart from smaller extracts in the Life of Johnson), the journal of his tour around Scotland and to the Hebrides with Dr Johnson, which was originally published in 1785.

It was the first edition of any Boswell work that was annotated and edited on the basis of the discovery of his personal papers in the 1920s and 1930s, and which was published to a larger audience.

Editions

The edition published in 1936 by Viking Press was strictly speaking not one of the "official" Yale series of Boswell's papers, which didn't begin until 1950. The copyright was held by Ralph Isham, who later sold his collection of Boswell papers to the renowned university. However the 1936 edition was prepared for print by the later editor of the Yale series, Frederick Pottle, and the 1961 edition published as a part of the official series was basically a further annotated and corrected version of the 1936 edition.