Compiled over several decades by Jasper John Boswell (1834-1912), The History and Genealogical Tables of the Boswells is an extensive two-volume genealogical chronicle of the Bosville and Boswell families in England and Scotland from the Norman Conquest to the early twentieth century, assembled from public records, heralds' visitations, parish registers, charters, wills, and family papers.

Volume I (Chapters I-XII, Genealogies 1-12, 192 pages, accompanied by a separate 16-page Index) traces the early Anglo-Norman traditions of the family from Sieur de Bosville in 1066 through the feudal baronies and Yorkshire branches of Conisbrough, Ardsley, Gunthwaite, and Newhall, and follows the establishment of the Scottish line in Berwickshire and Fife under Roger de Boswell, Sir John Boswell of Balgregie, and Sir Alexander and David Boswell of Balmuto down to the Battle of Flodden (1513).

Volume II (Chapters XIII-XL, Genealogies 13-39, 208 pages of text plus genealogical tables) covers the later Yorkshire houses (Doncaster, Clifton, Warmsworth, and Stainton, including the parliamentary colonel Godfrey Bosville of Gunthwaite and Sir William Boswell, resident ambassador at The Hague) alongside the principal Scottish branches of Knockroon (Chapter XXII), Auchinleck (Chapter XXIII), Craigstoun (Chapters XXVIII-XXIX), Balmuto (Chapter XXX, including Margaret Henderson and Lord Balmuto), and the descendants of Dr. John Boswell (Chapter XXXI) and Bruce Boswell (Chapter XXXII).

Chapter XXIII of Volume II is devoted to the Auchinleck line from David Boswell of Auchinleck (1640-1712) and Anne Hamilton through James Boswell, 7th Laird of Auchinleck, Alexander Boswell, Lord Auchinleck, James Boswell the biographer, and his sons Sir Alexander Boswell, 1st Baronet (1775-1822) and James Boswell the Younger, down to Sir James Boswell, 2nd Baronet (1806-1857) and the breaking of the Auchinleck entail in 1851. The chapter preserves verbatim transcripts of the family history written by the 7th Laird and Lord Auchinleck, extracts from the 1776 Auchinleck entail recorded in the General Register House in Edinburgh, a firsthand account of Jasper John Boswell's own visit to Auchinleck House, its rock-cut caves along the Lugar, and the ruins of the old castle and chapel of St. Vincent, and a letter to the author from Sir Alexander Boswell's daughter Margaret Emilia Vassall recounting her father's deathbed statement at Balmuto after his fatal 1822 duel with James Stuart of Dunearn. Later chapters in Volume II document the Norwich and Yorkshire branches of the author's own family (Chapters XXXIV-XXXVII) and include essays on the Gypsy Boswells and American Boswells (Chapters XXXIX-XL).

Historical Reliability: As a work of amateur Victorian and Edwardian genealogy compiled prior to modern archival scholarship, The History and Genealogical Tables of the Boswells is uneven in its reliability and requires critical verification against primary records. In Volume I, the author attempts to construct a continuous line of descent from the semi-legendary "Sieur de Bosville" at the Battle of Hastings (1066) and bridges eleventh- to fourteenth-century gaps by linking isolated Pipe Roll, charter, and Ragman Roll entries of similar surname; similarly, the exact genealogical connection between the Yorkshire Bosvilles of Gunthwaite and Ardsley and the Scottish Boswells of Berwickshire, Balmuto, and Auchinleck (as well as the sixteenth- to eighteenth-century link between the Yorkshire Boswells of Stainton and the author's Norwich ancestors) rests on conjecture rather than continuous documentary proof. In Volume II, while the transcriptions of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Scottish charters, entails, wills, and family memorials are of genuine documentary value, the biographical narrative of James Boswell (Chapter XXIII, pp. 102-109) is largely adapted from Charles Rogers's 1874 memoir in Boswelliana and repeats several nineteenth-century inaccuracies and anachronisms, such as misdating Boswell's departure for Utrecht to 1765, placing him and Samuel Johnson at the Cheshire Cheese in Fleet Street, and garbling details of his Irish jaunt and courtship of Margaret Montgomerie.