James Boswell and the Uses of Criticism

"James Boswell and the Uses of Criticism" argues that Boswell's London Journal offers a unique perspective on the social dynamics of printed criticism. Though unconventional and at first glance self-defeating, publishing was crucial to Boswell's project of social self-advancement. Scurrilous and surreptitious, collaborative and confrontational, Boswell's brief (and mostly ignominious) career as a critic in London throws into sharp relief the way criticism could be used, not to regulate the taste of an impersonal public, but to mediate relationships between authors.