Boswell in London: An Eighteenth-Century Soundscape Study

Abstract

The journals in which James Boswell records his experiences in London between 1760 and 1795 are a rich source of information regarding the sounds that were generated by and heard within the city. They are also highly revealing in terms of the manner in which a single individual listened, thought about sound and noise, and represented this form of sensory experience through writing. This article makes the case that a productive approach to this material is to examine it in relation to the widely used but often loosely defined concept of the soundscape. It draws together the various dimensions of this concept, including the ideas of immersion, selection, regulation, manipulation, and imagination, and brings them into dialogue with existing scholarship on Boswell’s construction of self through writing, and on the influence of The Spectator project and the role ascribed to the senses within the philosophical writing of Locke and Hume, both on him personally and eighteenth-century society more broadly. In so doing, it argues that we can nuance our understanding of Boswell in relation to others, himself, and the world and can identify patterns regarding the relationship between Boswell’s external and internal experience as they change over time.