The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, with Samuel Johnson,

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VG, 1st ed, 2nd state, 1785. In modern calf, to style, over tree calf boards, tips repaired. Spine, gilt tooling, original gilt titles to red calf label. Internally, half title, [4], (v-vii), [1], [1], 2-254 pp, [1] errata/advert, some light spotting to eps & half title, very faint edge browning, short margin tears to p509-514, text block edges yellowed. (Folio, 124*210 mm), (ESTC T53594. Pottle 114). Boswell was and remains a divisive personality, even for modern readers who find the fluent, precise, demotic prose of the journals compelling: an unstable amalgam of vibrant self-advertising vanity and self-tortured insecurity; an able but reluctant Edinburgh lawyer who marred his chances for judicial promotion with over-zealous and occasionally frenetic defences of poor criminal clients, with whom he felt a particular sympathy; a loving but erratic husband; a lenient, beloved, but overburdened father; a kind and improvement-oriented lowland laird who longed for life in London; a sentimental Jacobite who developed an extraordinary veneration for George III.