Life giving resources. Faithfully delivered.
FREE delivery on orders over £10
Serving over 2 million Christians in the UK
with Bibles, Books and Church Supplies
Our Buy-Now-Pay-Later accounts used
by over 4,000 UK Churches & Schools
Excellent 4.8 out of 5

Trustpilot

You now have 0 of this item in your basket

Boswell's Enlightenment

[Hardback]

by Robert Zaretsky

Author
Robert Zaretsky
Book Format
Hardback
Publisher
Harvard University Press
Published
January 2021

Read full description

Click to expand

Today's Price

£23.30

Free UK Delivery

Available - Usually dispatched within 4 days

Buying for a school or church? Upgrade to a FREE Eden Advance Account

Enter the product quantity

Boswell's Enlightenment

Today's Price £23.30

Frequently Bought Together

Boswell's Enlightenment

by Robert Zaretsky

Hardback

Unthinking Mastery

by Julietta Singh

Paperback

Add both to basket for £37.82

Product Description

Throughout his life, James Boswell struggled to fashion a clear account of himself, but try as he might, he could not reconcile the truths of his era with those of his religious upbringing. Boswell s Enlightenment" examines the conflicting credos of reason and faith, progress and tradition that pulled Boswell, like so many eighteenth-century Europeans, in opposing directions. In the end, the life of the man best known for writing Samuel Johnson s biography was something of a patchwork affair. As Johnson himself understood: That creature was its own tormentor, and I believe its name was BOSWELL. Few periods in Boswell s life better crystallize this internal turmoil than 1763 1765, the years of his Grand Tour and the focus of Robert Zaretsky s thrilling intellectual adventure. From the moment Boswell sailed for Holland from the port of Harwich, leaving behind on the beach his newly made friend Dr. Johnson, to his return to Dover from Calais a year and a half later, the young Scot was intent on not just touring historic and religious sites but also canvassing the views of the greatest thinkers of the age. In his relentless quizzing of Voltaire and Rousseau, Hume and Johnson, Paoli and Wilkes on topics concerning faith, the soul, and death, he was not merely a celebrity-seeker but for want of a better term a truth-seeker. Zaretsky reveals a life more complex and compelling than suggested by the label Johnson s biographer, and one that 250 years later registers our own variations of mind."