This is the first of two volumes containing Boswell's correspondence with more than 200 people, including Pitt, Rousseau, Paoli, John Wilkes, Sir Alexander Dick, Baretti and numerous women friends. The letters date from a three year period between 1766, when Boswell returned from his Grand Tour, to 1769, and his marriage to his cousin Margaret Montgomerie. They show Boswell in the happiest days of his life as the law student became a practising advocate, the literary hopeful a best-selling author, the pursuer of rich heiresses a family man, and the dreamer a landowner as the Laird of Dalblair. The letters to and from his correspondents are reprinted in full, with extensive explanatory notes.