Samuel Johnson’s Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland and James Boswell’s Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides are widely regarded as among the best pieces of travel writing ever produced. Johnson and Boswell spent the autumn of 1773 touring Scotland as far west as the islands of Skye, Raasay, Coll, Mull, Ulva, Inchkenneth and Iona. Highly readable, often profound, and at times very funny, their accounts of the ‘jaunt’ are above all a valuable record of a society undergoing rapid change. In this pioneering new edition, Ronald Black brings together the two men’s starkly contrasting accounts of each of the thirteen stages of the journey. He also restores to Boswell’s text 20,000 words from his journal which were denied entry to his book because they were intimate, defamatory, or about the islands rather than Johnson. The endnotes incorporate Boswell’s footnotes, translations of Latin passages, a clear summary of pre-existing information on the two texts, and a fresh focus on what the two men actually found on their trip. To the Hebrides also includes contemporary prints by Thomas Rowlandson, seventeen new maps and a comprehensive index. Their shifting view of some events is often hilarious. The story should be of particular interest to the many Canadians with Scots ancestry (as it is to this Welshman, who has none) and, best of all as a reminder of English as She Should be Writ, but Alas No Longer Is' Toronto Globe and Mail It is always pleasurable when a reviewer can recommend a book unreservedly. Congratulations to Ronald Black and Birlinn, To the Hebrides is a stunning achievement' Northwords Now Literature has never divised a better act than these two' Sunday Herald Do we really need another book about Boswell and Johnson's Highland journey? Yes, when it's this one' Roger Hutchinson, The Scotsman Samuel Johnson, a bookseller’s son from Lichfield, achieved fame as a poet and moral essayist before completing his most famous work, The Dictionary of the English Language. James Boswell had known him for exactly ten years when they set out together for the Hebrides in 1773. Son of a Scottish judge and himself a lawyer, Boswell is celebrated as much for the disarming honesty of his diaries as for his great biography of Johnson. Formerly a lecturer in Celtic at the universities of Glasgow and Edinburgh, Ronald Black is Gaelic Editor of the Scotsman. As well as various anthologies and studies of eighteenth- and twentieth-century Gaelic verse, he has published The Gaelic Otherworld, a new edition of the folklore collections of the Rev. John Gregorson Campbell of Tiree. Ronald Black (Raghnall MacilleDhuibh) is a retired Senior Lecturer in Celtic Studies at the University of Edinburgh and Gaelic Editor of the Scotsman. He is a regular broadcaster and contributes to a wide variety of newspapers and journals. He lives in Peebles, Scotland. Used Book in Good Condition