James Boswell (1740–95), lawyer and diarist, was a well-known man of letters in London. He came from a noble Scottish family, and on his father's death in 1782 became the ninth laird of Auchinleck. He is best known as the biographer of Samuel Johnson, and his Life of Johnson is a rich source of information on Goldsmith, albeit one with an often hostile tone. He met Goldsmith in 1762 at Thomas Davies's house, with publisher Robert Dodsley also present. Boswell’s London Journal 1762–1763 is an evocative account of his early years in London, during which he won the friendship of Johnson, Garrick and Thomas Sheridan. After a tour of Europe, where he met Voltaire, Rousseau and Corsican freedom fighter Pasquale Paoli, he returned to London where he met Joshua Reynolds, to whom he would later dedicate his Life of Johnson.

Goldsmith and Boswell had met at bookseller Thomas Davies's house on Thursday 21 September: it was their first encounter for almost three years, according to Boswell. The meeting was genial with Goldsmith telling Boswell that George Colman had praised Boswell's character the night before over dinner. Goldsmith had just received an advance of 500 guineas from William Griffin for his natural history, doubtless a factor that helped to prompt his invitation to Boswell and the others. Boswell's journal records the presence of writer Giuseppe Baretti, architect William Chambers (Letters 51 and 52) and Colman at the dinner and that the conversation centred on the theatre.

The copy-text is the manuscript in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Room, Yale University. It was first published, in facsimile, along with the printed transcription, in the Private Papers of James Boswell from Malahide Castle: In the Collection of Lt. Colonel Ralph Hayward Isham, ed. Geoffrey Scott and Frederick A. Pottle, vol. IX: 1772–1774 (Mount Vernon, NY: William Edwin Rudge, 1930). It is addressed ‘To | Boswell Esqr. | Carey St.’