James Boswell's Correspondence with His Scottish Mentors Hugh Blair, Lord Kames, and Sir William Forbes

FAIN: FB-54239-09

Richard B. Sher
New Jersey Institute of Technology (Newark, NJ 07102-1824)

My project is to edit three of the four correspondences in the most important volume yet to appear in the Yale Editions of the Private Papers of James Boswell: Boswell's correspondences with Hugh Blair, Lord Kames, and Sir William Forbes. Along with the fourth correspondent in this volume (Sir David Dalrymple, whose correspondence is being edited by a collaborator), these men were formidable 18th-century Scottish literary figures and cultural patrons in their own right, who made major contributions to religion, literary criticism, history, music, and law. They also had a large, and as yet unappreciated, influence on Boswell as mentors and role models. Yet few of these letters have ever been published. Thus, these correspondences--elucidated by the volume's introduction and footnotes, and further enhanced by the addition of Boswell's notes for a life of Kames--will significantly alter perceptions of Boswell and his correspondents and add to our knowledge of the Scottish Enlightenment.