Frederick A. Pottle

Frederick Albert Pottle (1897–1987) was an American literary scholar, biographer, and editor who was one of the world's foremost scholars on James Boswell. From 1929 to 1979 he was the editor of the Boswell Papers at Yale University. As editor, he studied the extensive writings of James Boswell; including the author's diaries, correspondences and papers, to compile a detailed account of his life. The first volume of the Boswell papers edited by Pottle, Boswell's London Journal: 1762-1763 was well received academically and was widely popular amongst the general public. The volume sold more than 1 million copies worldwide, and was translated into multiple languages.

In 1929 Pottle became the editor of the Boswell Papers. At the time, the extensive collection of personal writings from prolific author James Boswell had been in the hands of private collector Ralph Heyward Isham with Geoffrey Scott serving as editor. The Boswell Project was tasked with editing the papers and releasing them in volumes to the general public and academia. At the time of Scott's death, a letter of congratulations to Pottle was found in one of his jacket pockets.

Pottle's biography of Boswell, James Boswell: The Early Years, 1740-1769, was lauded by the Poetry Foundation for letting the subject (Boswell) speak for himself. It included a translation of a letter that Boswell had written to introduce himself to philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, in which intimate details of Boswell's motivations and beliefs were explored by Pottle. The Poetry Foundation stated that three overarching themes in Pottle's biography of Boswell were: exploring Boswell's connections to his family, his training and career growth in his trade as a lawyer, and the exploration and analysis of his writings. Reviewing the biography in The New York Times, Thomas Lask stated: "the biography justifies itself because Boswell is so alive in it", with Lask commending the biography for portraying Boswell's varying, inconsistent morality and behaviours with nuance.

The Poetry Foundation noted that Pottle's lifelong scholarship of Boswell had greatly elevated the standing of the author, replacing the 19th century critical standing of the author as an "idler"; a man known mostly for his biography Life of Samuel Johnson LL. D, whose other works were discounted.

Part 2 of the biography, James Boswell: The Later Years, 1769-1795 was in early development, but Pottle relinquished control of the project to Frank Brady who wrote the book, publishing it in 1984.

Pottle's 1982 book Pride and Negligence: The History of the Boswell Papers was partly autobiographical, and detailed Pottle's lifelong scholarship of the collection. It also traces the provenance of the collection as it passed from descendants of Boswell in the 18th and 19th centuries, to private collectors, to Yale University in 1949.

Pottle retired from the editorial committee of the Boswell Papers in 1979, but he continued to work on the project until 1984. He was the Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 1950 to 1960, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a Fellow of the International Institute of Arts and Letters. He edited 13 volumes of the Boswell Papers.

He was married to Marion Isabel Starbird, a trained librarian who often assisted with his scholarly work on the Boswell Papers. He had 3 children: his daughter Annette died in infancy, his son Sam Pottle was a well known musician and composer, and his son Christopher is a professor of engineering at Cornell University.