01/26/2015
Zaretsky’s buoyant and rigorous ‘intellectual adventure’ is a successful attempt to place the writer within the broad tapestry of the European Enlightenment…In Zaretsky’s book, we see the effect of one great mind upon another, again and again, and thus we see the evolution of Boswell’s dazzling prose style.
New York Review of Books - Andrew O’Hagan
Entertaining…[Zaretsky] put[s] Boswell forward as, among other things, a harbinger of our own day, a living symbol of a transition from the high-minded ideals of a more pure intellectual world to the self-centered obsessions of day-to-day reality.
Christian Science Monitor - Steven Donoghue
Enthralling…Boswell’s Enlightenment proves that the world’s greatest biographer makes a fascinating subject in his own right.
Los Angeles Review of Books - Josh Emmons
The key theme of Robert Zaretsky’s splendid new book on James Boswell is that his life was a roaming drama of self-discovery…Boswell’s Enlightenment is thus about the art of living. Boswell’s interest for the historian lies not with the originality of his thought—there was none—but as an example of someone who struggled, Zaretsky shows, ‘to bend his person to certain philosophical ends.’ Hume, Johnson, Rousseau and Voltaire were asked to help him divine what those ends might be. Zaretsky’s elegantly written book, then, stands alongside a growing literature—including the works of Pierre Hadot (Philosophy as a Way of Life ) and Alexander Nehemas (The Art of Living )—that renders the history of philosophy not as an academic pursuit, but as something wrought in pursuit of the common good.
Times Literary Supplement - Gavin Jacobson
James Boswell, best known as Samuel Johnson’s biographer, was a lifelong seeker of truth. He struggled to put together his Calvinist religious heritage with the insights and perspectives of the Enlightenment. From 1763 to 1765 he toured Europe not just to see the historic sites but to encounter some of its greatest living thinkers, among them Rousseau and Voltaire. Zaretsky adroitly chronicles Boswell’s intellectual journey and introduces the reader to the varieties of 18th-century Enlightenment. Boswell’s struggles remain with us—over the relationship between faith and reason, the nature of human liberty and equality, the duties of citizenship, the role and limits of the state, and what constitutes the good life.
Robert Zaretsky’s excellent book provides a wealth of information about Enlightenment thought, all of it brought to life in the mind and imagination of that irrepressible Scot, James Boswell…Boswell’s Enlightenment is also the reader’s enlightenment. The book surveys the major ideas of this period’s thinkers, from luminaries like Johnson and Hume, Voltaire and Rousseau, to somewhat lesser lights like Adam Smith and Hugh Blair, Montesquieu and Diderot…The book deserves the highest praise.
The Key Reporter - D. T. Siebert
Zaretsky believes Boswell was an exceptional talent, notwithstanding his weaknesses, and certainly worthy of our attention. Glossing several periods of Boswell’s life but closely examining his grand tour of the Continent (1763–1765), Zaretsky elevates Boswell’s station, repairs Boswell’s literary reputation, and corrects a longstanding underestimation, calling attention to his complicated and curious relationship to the Enlightenment, a movement or milieu that engulfed him without necessarily defining him…Bristling with the animated, ambulatory prose of the old style of literary and historical criticism, the kind that English professors disdain but educated readers enjoy and appreciate.
Liberty Unbound - Allen Mendenhall
During his life, Boswell was known more for his associations than for his accomplishments, but it’s time, historian Robert Zaretsky thinks, to give him his moment in the spotlight…Zaretsky’s telling is as much an intellectual history as it is a coming-of-age tale, though one gets the sense that Boswell never quite came of age…Zaretsky’s account of this conflicted man is a sympathetic, fluid, and very enjoyable read. We see a man in search not so much of wisdom as of seekers of wisdom. As much as he tried, Boswell never became an intellectual equal with the great thinkers of his day, but as an observer of them (and of himself) he had no peer.
First Things - David Nolan
In this beautifully written account, Robert Zaretsky plays Boswell to Boswell, as the young Scot goes in search of Europe’s great thinkers—and in the process discovers his own calling. Part biography, part history of ideas, it makes for a thrilling intellectual journey.
With the flair of an accomplished novelist, Zaretsky creates a vivid portrait…Drawing on an impressive array of firsthand sources and writing with a keen eye for the dramatic, Zaretsky has done students and scholars alike a timely favor.
1650–1850 - Paul J. deGategno
Engaging…Boswell’s Enlightenment is a readable, smart, accessible introduction to a self-absorbed but likable young man who reminds us the Age of Enlightenment was also the Age of Exuberance.
Houston Chronicle - Fritz Lanham
Zaretsky has written an engrossing study of James Boswell, the renowned biographer of Samuel Johnson and the equally famous diarist…There must have been something irresistible about Boswell’s personality for such a young man to have been able to secure the attentions of these men, not to mention the close friendship of literary titan Samuel Johnson. A fascinating character study, Boswell’s Enlightenment helps readers understand what that something was. It is also the story of Boswell’s struggle to reconcile his strict Calvinist upbringing with the ideas of the Enlightenment and with his tempestuous impulses and literary ambition.
Zaretsky’s buoyant and rigorous ‘intellectual adventure’ is a successful attempt to place the writer within the broad tapestry of the European Enlightenment…In Zaretsky’s book, we see the effect of one great mind upon another, again and again, and thus we see the evolution of Boswell’s dazzling prose style.
New York Review of Books - Andrew O’Hagan
★ 2014-12-11
