Boswellians and anti-Boswellians everywhere, finally, will be pleased to see the publication of Lyle Larsen's James Boswell: As His Contemporaries Saw Him. Few figures have inspired such fandom or enmity over the history of eighteenth-century studies as a professional enterprise. (Is he a great biographer or do we need to protect Johnson from the errors of the Life?) Larsen's gambit is to trace controversies over Boswell back to the eighteenth century itself by providing a documentary compendium of everything that was said about him by friends, acquaintances, and strangers. The book is arranged chronologically and has the structure of a biography recorded in palimpsest by the letters, diaries, journal articles, and reviews of others.
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