Today, October 29 (1740), is the birthday of James Boswell, Scottish writer and biographer, a son of a judge who wanted him to study law.
So James Boswell passed his bar exams in Scotland. He didn’t like law, but he loved goodtime, traveling, and London. So he went to London and met his hero, the 53-year-old Samuel Johnson. They became good friends. Over the next 20 years, Boswell followed Johnson around, constantly taking notes. After Johnson died, Boswell spent years writing a biography of his friend. In 1791, The Life of Samuel Johnson was published. There had never been a biography like it before. It’s still considered one of the greatest biographies ever written.
He died at the age of 54, in 1795.
