1740 Boswell born 29 October (New Style) in Edinburgh, first surviving child and eldest son of Euphemia (Erskine) Boswell and Alexander Boswell, Edinburgh advocate, and heir to the Auchinleck estate in Ayrshire.
December: The War of the Austrian Succession begins when Frederick II (‘the Great’) of Prussia invades Silesia.
David Hume, Treatise of Human Nature concluded (Books I and II 1739); Samuel Richardson, Pamela.
1741 Hume, Essays Moral and Political (concluded 1742).
1742 John Wesley, The Character of a Methodist; Henry Fielding, Joseph Andrews; Alexander Pope, New Dunciad; Edward Young, Night Thoughts (concluded 1745).
1743 The Battle of Dettingen – defeat of French forces by British, Hanoverian and Hessian (under George II).
1744 Death of Pope; Samuel Johnson, Life of Richard Savage.
1745 The second Jacobite uprising, supporting the claim of the Stuart heir, Prince Charles Edward, to the throne of Britain; death of Jonathan Swift.
1746 April: Defeat of Jacobite forces at the Battle of Culloden; escape of Charles Edward to France; beginning of severe government reprisals, including suppression of Scottish Highland dress, culture and language; many Highland estates afterwards forfeited.
1746–9 Boswell attends James Mundell’s academy, in Edinburgh’s West Bow.
1747 Richardson, Clarissa; Thomas Gray, Ode on … Eton College.
1748 Alexander Boswell appointed sheriff depute of Wigtownshire.
October: Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle ends War of Austrian Succession.
Abolition of hereditary jurisdiction in Scotland; Hume, Philosophical Essays.
1749 Death of grandfather, James Boswell; Alexander Boswell inherits Auchinleck; Boswell leaves Mundell’s to be tutored at home in Edinburgh by John Dun.
Fielding, Tom Jones; Johnson, Irene and The Vanity of Human Wishes.
1750 Alexander Boswell resigns as sheriff depute.
Johnson’s Rambler essays begin (concluded 1752).
1751 Hume, Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals; Gray, Elegy … in a Country Church-yard.
1752 Boswell severely ill; sent to Moffat spa to recover; Joseph Fergusson (later minister of Tundergarth parish) succeeds as tutor after Dun is ordained Auchinleck parish minister. Hume, Political Discourses.
1753 Richardson, Sir Charles Grandison (concluded 1754).
1753–59 Boswell attends the University of Edinburgh; forms close friendships with John Johnston of Grange and William Johnson Temple, who introduces him to Church of England worship.
1754 Alexander Boswell elevated to the Scottish Court of Session, with the judicial style of Lord Auchinleck.
Hume, History of Great Britain (concluded 1761).
1755 Lord Auchinleck appointed judge of the High Court of Justiciary.
April: Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language.
1756 May: Britain formally declares war on France.
June: The French capture Minorca.
August: Frederick II attacks Saxony, beginning the Seven Years War in Europe (the French and Indian War in North America).
Joseph Warton, Essay on … Pope (concluded 1782).
1757 Boswell suffers religious crises; disturbed by ideas of free will vs. determinism; ‘shaken’ by teachings of Methodists; suffers severe depression and is sent again to Moffat spa. Edmund Burke, Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful.
1758 Boswell associates with actors and other Edinburgh theatre people; meets David Hume, Sir David Dalrymple and other eminent Scots men of letters.
‘October: A Poem’ (unpublished).
‘An Evening-Walk in the Abbey-church of Holyroodhouse’, first published work (Scots Magazine, August).
September: Accompanies father on the northern judicial circuit; begins keeping a diary.
Hume, Enquiry concerning Human Understanding; Johnson’s Idler essays begin (concluded 1760).
1759 Boswell initiated as a Freemason; sent by his father to the University of Glasgow, where Adam Smith is among his teachers.
The tide of war turns in Britain’s favour.
August: The Battle of Minden – an Anglo-Hanoverian army under Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick defeats French forces.
September: The British capture Québec.
Johnson, The Prince of Abissinia (‘Rasselas’); William Robertson, History of Scotland; Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments; Young, Conjectures on Original Composition.
1760 Boswell is author (or co-author) of A View of the Edinburgh Theatre during the Summer Season, 1759.
March–May: Runs away from the University of Glasgow to London; receives Roman Catholic communion; associates with Samuel Derrick, consorts with ladies of the town, suffers first bout of venereal disease; introduced into high-born circles by the Earl of Eglinton; brought by his father back to Edinburgh, where he reluctantly continues law study and struggles for permission to return to London to seek a commission in the Guards.
November: Publishes Observations … on … Foote’s … The Minor.
George II dies, being succeeded by his grandson, George III (crowned September 1760); Alexander Donaldson’s A Collection of Original Poems by the Rev. Mr. Blacklock and Other Scotch Gentlemen; Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy (concluded 1767).
1761 May: Boswell meets Lieutenant the Hon. Andrew Erskine, soldier-poet.
June–July: Attends Thomas Sheridan’s lectures on elocution in Edinburgh.
August: An Elegy on the Death of an Amiable Young Lady, with An Epistle from Lycidas to Menalcas (with dedicatory letters by Erskine, George Dempster and Boswell himself).
October: Resignation of William Pitt the elder, under whom the great British successes in the Seven Years (French and Indian) War had come.
November–December: An Ode to Tragedy.
December: Invited to join Edinburgh’s Select Society. Charles Churchill, The Rosciad.
1762 January: Britain declares war on Spain (which was allying with France).
February: Donaldson’s A Collection of Original Poems by Scotch Gentlemen Vol. II (Boswell contributes more than thirty items).
7 March: Boswell signs a deed drawn up by his father consenting to vest Auchinleck in trustees of Lord Auchinleck’s choosing, in exchange for an annual allowance of £100 (increased to £200 in November).
March: Publishes The Cub at Newmarket: a Tale.
May: Appointment of John Stuart, Earl of Bute, as First Lord of the Treasury, ending forty-five-year Whig domination.
5 June: First issue of the anti-Bute North Briton, by Churchill and John Wilkes.
July: Johnson awarded annual royal pension of £300.
30 July: Boswell passes his examination in civil law.
September–November: Tour of border counties; keeps a record of this ‘Harvest Jaunt’, his first fully written-out journal.
3 November: Preliminaries of the Peace of Paris signed, ending hostilities in the Seven Years (French and Indian) War.
15 November: Boswell sets out for his second visit to London (recorded in this portion of the journal).
‘Ossian’ (James Macpherson), Fingal.
1763 January: Critical Strictures on the New Tragedy of Elvira.
10 February: Treaty of Paris signed.
8 April: Resignation of Bute as First Lord of the Treasury; succeeded by George Grenville.
12 April: Boswell publishes Letters Between the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and James Boswell Esq.
23 April: North Briton no. 45 published, resulting in the arrest of Wilkes for ‘seditious libel’.
16 May: Boswell meets Johnson.
6 August: Leaves England for law study in Utrecht, to be followed by a tour of Europe.