James Boswell

James Boswell (1740–1795) was a Scottish lawyer, diarist, and biographer whose vivid, observant prose helped shape modern biography. Born in Edinburgh and educated at the University of Edinburgh and the University of Glasgow, he was admitted to the Scottish bar in 1766. Boswell is best known for *The Life of Samuel Johnson* (1791), based on years of friendship, travel, and meticulous note-taking about the English writer Samuel Johnson. His extensive journals and letters, published posthumously, reveal a candid record of 18th-century social life as well as his own ambitions and struggles. Boswell died in London in 1795.