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For the first time in years, a new significant finding of Boswell material has been made, with the discovery at the Bodleian library of Boswell's own 39 page draft for a dictionary of the Scots language, containing about 800 Scots words and phrases.

The existence of a draft manuscript has been long known from references in Boswell's journal, but it was presumed lost until recently discovered by researcher Dr Susan Rennie at the Bodleian library in Oxford, where it had been mis-catalogued and attached to a copy of lexicographer John Jamieson's work. The exact provenance of the manuscript by Boswell is unknown, but it was supposedly sold off at an 1825 auction following the death of both of Boswell's sons, James and Alexander, in 1822, and was later attached to a copy of Jamieson's work which was acquired by the Bodleian in 1927.

Read more in "Boswell's Scots dictionary found after 200 years" at news.scotman.com, and in "Boswell's original Dictionary discovered" at the Cumnock Chronicle.