James Boswell: The Journal of His German and Swiss Travels, 1764

This volume, first in the Yale Research Series of Boswell's journals, covers his emotionally eventful youthful travels through the German and Swiss territories, from mid-June 1764 (after his law studies in Utrecht) to New Year's Day, 1765, when he crossed the Alps for the next stages of his European tour, in Italy, Corsica and France. The volume is the Research Series parallel to Boswell on the Grand Tour: Germany and Switzerland, 1764, ed. F. A. Pottle (1953), whose annotation the editor, Marlies K. Danziger, has greatly deepened, expanded, supplemented and in many cases corrected. In keeping with the editorial policies of the Research Series, it restores Boswell's original spelling, punctuation and paragraphing (and his generally less than perfect French). The editor's detailed notes illuminate the contemporary political and historical context as well as a vast array of contemporary issues, concepts and personalities no longer familiar to modern readers (especially English-speaking ones). As well as the text of the fully-written journal, the volume includes Boswell's personal daily memoranda and his frequently revealing 'Ten Lines a Day' poems; the autobiographical 'Ébauche de ma vie' written for Rousseau, along with its various drafts, outlines, and attendant correspondence; his detailed expense accounts (a window on the fluctuating currencies and erratic economy of a Europe not yet formed into our modern nation-states); and four maps, adapted from contemporary cartographic records, illustrating Boswell's complicated and often arduous itinerary. Boswell's European travels followed his exhilarating stay in London of 1762-1763 and his mostly bleak winter in the United Provinces in 1763-64. Though forever to be best known for his later accounts of his principal biographical subject, Samuel Johnson, Boswell has emerged since the recovery of his private papers as a compelling autobiographer, and here shows his fascination with, and abilities to record with typic

Marlies K. Danziger is Professor Emerita of English, Hunter College and the Graduate School, City University of New York.