power saws
james boswell as his contemporaries saw him
few major authors have generated such wildly fluctuating estimates over the years as james boswell . both as a writer and as a man he has stirred debate for more than two centuries . scholars and critics have differed as to whether his life of samuel johnson published in 1791 is the finest biography in english or just a pretty book of questionable accuracy . one commentator recently argued that his published journals are the greatest english autobiographical epic while another has dismissed it as the diary of a nobody . boswell has been acclaimed the greatest of modern biographers but also attacked as a mere sycophant and fool . in this collection drawn from letters diaries memoirs book reviews and newspaper articles we learn how contemporaries responded to the same issues that puzzle and divide critics today . from that we see how estimates of james boswell fluctuated just as wildly in his day as in ours . lyle larsen teaches english at santa monica college .