The volume collects letters exchanged between James Boswell (1740–1795) and his longtime friend Sir William Forbes of Pitsligo (1739–1806). While thoroughly documenting the friendship between the two, it also illuminates the lives of Boswell and Forbes individually, especially Boswell’s final decade in London.
The volume contains 111 comprehensively annotated letters, few of which have appeared previously in print: 79 exchanged between Forbes and Boswell between 1772 and 1794, and 32 involving other correspondents. The edition draws extensively on unpublished manuscripts in both the Boswell Collection at Yale and the Fettercairn Papers in the National Library of Scotland.
The volume was published by Edinburgh University Press in February 2022 and is available in hardcover and digital formats. Click here to order it from Amazon.