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James Boswell and the Uses of Criticism
- SEL Studies in English Literature 1500-1900
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 50, Number 3, Summer 2010
- pp. 665-681
- 10.1353/sel.2010.0003
- Article
- Additional Information
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"James Boswell and the Uses of Criticism" argues that Boswell's London Journal offers a unique perspective on the social dynamics of printed criticism. Though unconventional and at first glance self-defeating, publishing was crucial to Boswell's project of social self-advancement. Scurrilous and surreptitious, collaborative and confrontational, Boswell's brief (and mostly ignominious) career as a critic in London throws into sharp relief the way criticism could be used, not to regulate the taste of an impersonal public, but to mediate relationships between authors.