On this day in 1762 James Boswell left Edinburgh for London, beginning the eight-and-a-half-month stay that would be recorded in his London Journal. When this and most of Boswell's other journals -- some 8000 pages of manuscript -- were discovered in the 1920s and 30s, they earned him a reputation as one of the great British diarists, to go with his Life of Johnson and his longstanding reputation as one of the great biographers. Read historically, the highlight of the Journal might be Boswell's first meeting with Samuel Johnson, though it was not auspicious ... FULL STORY »
