Boswell's Political Career

by Frank Brady

Yale University Press, 1965, [First Edition], illustrated title page, hardcover, dust-jacket

Very Good Condition, some edge and shelf wear, some rubbing to edges and corners, ex-library with stamps to publishers page, back end-papers and top fore-edge, front fly-leaf removed, grazing to back end-papers, tape residue on covers; price-clipped dust-jacket shows some edge and shelf wear with some rubbing to edges and corners, minor creasing, some tape residue (see photographs)

"That literary Boswell aspired to be the political Boswell - that for some twenty-five years he worked, schemed, flattered, and insulted in vain attempts to win a seat in Parliament - may come as some surprise.  "A Tory with Whig principles," Boswell united strongly conservative general views with firm support of such liberal causes as the Corsican revolt and the American Revolution.  His 1783 Letter to the People of Scotland gained the gratitude of the younger Pitt; but a second letter aimed against Pitt's man in Scotland ended any chance of a Scottish political career for Boswell.  Regarding politics as his main purpose in life, the greatest of English biographers considered himself a failure, a verdict that time reversed too late to comfort him."