This volume, first in the "Yale Research Series" of Boswell's journals, covers Boswell's 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).