The volume includes Boswell’s correspondence with three of the most prominent members of The Club, revealing different facets of Boswell’s full and varied involvement with life and literature. With David Garrick, Boswell carried on a lively, light-hearted exchange, always more urgent on Boswell’s than on Garrick’s part, until Garrick’s death in 1779. A year earlier Boswell had begun writing to Edmund Burke, and this correspondence extends until 1791, a period that included much of Burke’s active political life as well as Boswell’s major accomplishments and disappointments. The most extensive and intimate correspondence of this volume, that with Edmond Malone, especially illuminates Boswell’s professionalism as a writer. It begins in 1785 with Boswell and Malone's work on making revisions for the second edition of The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, and continues through their collaboration on his Life of Johnson.
In total, the volume includes a total of 150 letters: 13 letters to Garrick and 16 from Garrick; 26 letters to Burke and 11 from Burke; 43 letters to Malone and 41 from Malone. 16 additional letters (10 to Boswell and 6 from him) of which no texts are known to be extant, receive notice under their proper dates, with as much information about their contents as could be gathered. Boswell’s correspondence with Burke also includes 1 letter from Burke and 1 letter to Burke from Henry Seymour Conway.