Boswell Reading Boswell: a Chapter in Autobiographical Misconstruction

James Boswell, like any contemporary Scottish or English gentleman, was a wide reader, schooled in the classics and, of course, in the greats of the vernacular, especially Shakespeare, Addison and, of his immediate contemporaries, Johnson. Boswell's reading, however, was not at all systematic, or systematisable. Except in his legal practice, where he often records reading solidly and unenthusiastically for a particular case, he tended to read as the mood took him, and often altogether without solidity. But Boswell's reading was in one respect distinctive, even thorough, and certainly directed towards understanding one thing as clearly as possible, even if filled with misreadings and misconstructions. He read his own journal, and the intention was to understand himself. My point is that Boswell made a conscious and sustained attempt with the Life of Johnson to edit himself into a less mockable, less amusing, less frivolous narrative figure for the purposes of public consumption, and thereby into a more consistent, less shaming, less volatile individual for his own consumption than in the journals that provided the fundamental reading material for the lives of Boswell and of Johnson