cover image All the Sweets of Being: A Life of James Boswell

All the Sweets of Being: A Life of James Boswell

Roger Hutchinson. Mainstream Publishing Company, $35 (238pp) ISBN 978-1-85158-702-5

In this sympathetic portrait of the Scots author, Hutchinson sets out to rescue Boswell (1740-1795) from his reputation as a drunken womanizer who chased cravenly after Samuel Johnson in order to write the literary giant's biography (The Life of Samuel Johnson, 1791). Hutchinson, an English writer (Crimes of War: The Antanas Gecas Affair), argues that the friendship between the two was mutual and that Johnson cultivated Boswell, 30 years his junior, and eagerly toured the Hebrides with him. In his 20s, Boswell fled the narrow Edinburgh world of his birth for the stimulating environment of London. He met with Voltaire and Rousseau, among other notables, and traveled to Corsica, later writing about the Corsican fight for independence (Account of Corsica, 1768). After numerous love affairs, he married in 1769 and fathered many children. Despite the inclusion of a wealth of interesting historical detail, Hutchinson's rambling account does not ultimately do his subject justice. Photos. (Jan.)